For Vince Commisso, striking a $250 million (US$186 million) deal with Scholastic to invest in his company 9 Story Media Group was a journey decades in the making.

The president and CEO of the Toronto-headquartered children’s media company behind Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood has a long history with Scholastic IP, going back to the mid-’90s when he was a producer on Nelvana’s animated adaptation of The Magic School Bus.

Commisso maintained his ties to Scholastic after founding 9 Story in 2002, producing series such as PBS Kids and Prime Video’s Clifford the Big Red Dog and providing the animation for Apple TV+’s Eva the Owlet via its animation studio Brown Bag Films. The company has also distributed hundreds of hours of Scholastic content.

He tells Playback Daily that the negotiations around the transaction, however, began last summer.

The deal, announced March 12, will see Scholastic acquire 100% of the economic interest in 9 Story Media Group, as well as a minority of voting rights. Commisso says 9 Story’s leadership will remain intact, with control of the company remaining with the existing managers. The company will also maintain its own independent board of directors.

As part of the announcement, Scholastic outlined how the deal would unlock significantly more opportunities for production, distribution and global licensing for its library of IP via 9 Story’s divisions in Toronto, Dublin and Bali.

For 9 Story, Commisso says the end game is to unlock the value of Scholastic’s IP. “We increase the chances [of success] dramatically… by being able to take a piece of IP that either is established or known and say it’s got Scholastic behind it,” he says. “We are going to have a strategy that brings books to market and a strategy that brings television content to market.”

The strategy includes building on 9 Story Media’s existing development slate, which Commisso says was part of the appeal for Scholastic to make the strategic investment. Not only will 9 Story be able to produce adaptations of well-known and parent-approved Scholastic books, but Scholastic will publish books based on new and established 9 Story IP.

Commisso says one “wrinkle” in negotiations with Scholastic was 9 Story’s acquisition of the assets of Toronto-based prodco Portfolio Entertainment, including the development slate and production of the adult animated series Breaking Bear for Tubi.

“We’d been talking about that for longer than we were talking with Scholastic, and felt like we had to execute on that,” he says. “It was a wrinkle to the Scholastic deal because generally you don’t do these things at the same time. But we were able to manage through that wrinkle with them, and they were very understanding and co-operative about that.”

The deal also saw Portfolio co-founder Lisa Olfman join 9 Story as an executive producer to continue to oversee Portfolio’s projects.

“It doesn’t make sense in this era for us to say to someone like Lisa, who is so talented and capable in creating opportunities for shows to be produced, ‘great, we’ll take it from here,'” says Commisso. “I think that was one of the things that appealed to all parties. That opportunity to have her stay on and help convert those shows was the deciding factor.”

Commisso says the deal also shows how appealing Canadian content is to the international market. “It speaks to the evolution of the nature of Canadian content, the quality of it and how international buyers come to Canada, believing that what we do here appeals to the world,” he says. “For us, we get to do that while making sure we stay true to the mandates within Canada, which is growing talent, providing employment and having a strong independent production community here.”

And it comes at a time when the production community at home and abroad is struggling, adds Commisso.

“We’re living in a time that’s the opposite and equal of the peak TV time in 2021, where the highest number of shows were ordered in the history of television content. What we’re feeling now, for a whole host of reasons, is the opposite and equal effect of that,” he says, citing interest rate hikes, reduced spending from streamers, the dual U.S. strikes and ongoing geopolitical issues. “The whole industry is suffering and what is happening in Canada is that we, at one point in time, had a strong commissioning base here: that has been eroded.”

Despite the challenges, Commisso is looking ahead to when the deal closes, which is expected sometime this summer.

“We all got into this business because we want to do what’s right by kids,” he says. “Our missions are the same. The fact that doing that translates to a great business opportunity feels like we’ve earned it.”

Image courtesy of 9 Story Media Group