For the past four months, Brad Schwartz’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing.

Ever since new CW owners Nexstar appointed him president, entertainment of the U.S. network, Canadian creators have been touching base with their transplanted former co-worker. For his part, he’s welcoming the calls.

“What’s great about being a Canadian running a U.S. broadcast network is all my Canadian friends keep calling,” he tells Playback. “I do know a lot of the production companies in Canada, and I’m friends with a great many of them. I’m trying to find ways to work with them all — we are taking many a pitch.”

That Bat-Signal is sure to get Canadian creatives frothing. During his time as the president of Pop Media Group, Schwartz famously brought Schitt’s Creek to U.S. audiences. He also consulted with former CW president Mark Pedowitz on bringing Canadian shows like Family Law, Coroner and Trickster to the network.

Before that, the executive kicked off MTV in Canada, licensed series like 1 Girl 5 Gays and The Hills After Show to U.S. markets (the latter became the first Canadian show broadcast live to the U.S.), and worked on the deal to launch E! Canada.

Schwartz recalls his former boss, Playback Hall of Fame inductee Susanne Boyce, telling him to “take Canada to the world.” On the night Schitt’s Creek historically swept the comedy categories at the Primetime Emmy Awards, he called Boyce from the show to tell her they’d succeeded. He says he’s never forgotten her words.

“I’m such a proud Canadian, I want to champion Canada to the world. Bringing Cancon to the CW and into the U.S. is a personal thing for me,” he explains.

And then there’s the business side.

When Schwartz joined the CW in early November, he was tasked with overseeing programming strategy, daily operations and creative and brand development. Shortly before Nexstar took over a 75% stake in the CW from CBS Studios and Warner Bros. TV, more than half of the current schedule was gutted. Now, Schwartz is seeking to expand and reinvent the traditionally younger-skewing network, and he’s looking to Canada to do so.

“We need to think of creative financing models to get content made,” he says. “We don’t have the budgets of our competitors, so we have to think smartly about how to get great content on the air at a reasonable price. The economics of partnering with Canadians make a lot of financial sense.”

Schwartz adds he’s open to pitches at all levels of development, and is looking to expand the CW’s traditional 18 to 34 age range. He cites horror, comedy, adult drama, high-end young adult series and even an experimental movie night as genres he’s looking to explore as he broadens the network and builds out that audience.

Heroes are still integral to the CW’s traditional “home of heroes” mandate, but Schwartz says the term includes familial heroes, sports heroes, and even underdogs. What he is specifically looking for, however, is to get in on those projects at the ground level with partnerships and copros.

“Coproductions can be a loose term,” he says. “There are different ways of carving up the credits. The real solution is coming in during the early stages. There’s a psychological piece to that. My experience with Canadian content is a lot of the time the content is brought to market as a finished product. When something goes through the acquisition door, it’s never perceived as a priority.”

He says in the case of Pop TV, they were coming in on Schitt’s Creek at the beginning, championing the show and, in that case, covering salary increases following renegotiations at the end of season four.

“We were getting Eugene Levy on The Tonight Show and a two-page Vanity Fair spread, and spending money to send them to the Deadline contenders event, and doing TCAs,” he says. “We did everything we could to make sure people knew about Schitt’s Creek.”

How much Schwartz is willing to spend on those partnerships or what these potential funding models may look like is less clear. “Every project is different,” he says. “People always ask me, ‘Well, what are you spending on stuff?’ And I’m like, ‘How much do we like it?'”

He says the goal is to build the CW’s new schedule with a solid mix of buzzy, premium scripted series and more economical projects in the scripted and unscripted spaces.

“Just because you pick up something that’s efficient doesn’t mean it couldn’t be the biggest hit on the network,” he says. “But for us to work with our budgets and drive the CW towards profitability, we have to take some big swings and then average those big swings down with partnerships and efficiencies. That’s where partnering with Canada and amazing content makes a lot of sense.”

Schwartz adds the CW doesn’t exist internationally, so while he’s looking for exclusive U.S. rights, there’s an opportunity for partners to leverage a U.S. broadcaster with international partners. (Plus room to negotiate shared secondary revenue sources.)

“If we put a piece of content out there, you should be able to watch that content and all seasons of that content on the CW. You shouldn’t be able to get that show somewhere else. That’s how you build a brand,” he says. “But being involved with us certainly makes those rights more valuable to you internationally.”

Tackling the TV landscape and budget world ahead, Schwartz adds the CW needs to be as “scrappy” as possible. Therefore, he doesn’t expect productions to flee Vancouver and Toronto — where series such as Supernatural, The Flash, Arrow and In the Dark were filmed — anytime soon. He predicts they’ll continue to be valuable service production hubs for upcoming U.S. projects and reveals he’s pointing creatives Canada’s way.

“We have a show we’ve been developing from scratch with an Emmy-winning producer,” he says. “We’re trying to figure out how to do it for a price. So we have connected them with Canadian production companies to execute for us. Those meetings are happening now,” he continues.

“So it’s a two-way street. It’s people bringing us projects, but we also have projects that we’re bringing the other direction.”

Photo by Joseph Viles