Westwind Pictures has hired Anton Leo away from the Just For Laughs comedy festival to be its new VP of development.

Leo, a former senior comedy production exec at the CBC, from Sept. 18 will develop new TV shows for Westwind Pictures.

Besides getting the indie into new programming genres, including kids and teen programming, Leo will also acquire new properties and formats.

Westwind Pictures principal Mary Darling worked with Leo developing Little Mosque on the Prairie for the CBC, and now wants to bring that partnership in-house.

“He [Leo] is unbelievably creative and a fair-dealing guy. Every conversation about Little Mosque, on working with this or that writer, his response was thoughtful and creative and caring,” Darling recalls.

Leo worked for eight years in all at the CBC as a creative head, a production executive and an executive producer.

His CBC credits, besides Little Mosque On The Prairie, included 22 Minutes, The Ron James Show, 18 To Life and Air Farce.

Leo is the latest Canadian broadcast executive to jump over to indie TV development, after the CBC’s Sally Catto landed at Cineflix Media and Brett Burlock took up at Take 5 Development.