CanWest Restructures Content Leadership Team

TORONTO, January 30:
Following its acquisition of Alliance Atlantis’ broadcasting assets, CanWest
Broadcasting has announced leadership changes to its content division,
affecting teams across the board including content creation, acquisition, news
and information, scheduling and new media, among others.

Leading the newly
centralized content acquisitions team, Phil Piazza takes on the role of VP of
content acquisitions. He is charged with creating a focused acquisitions
strategy that maximizes the buying strength of the combined organization. He
will oversee the acquisition of conventional, specialty and new-media rights,
while working closely with the channels’ strategic scheduling and content
creation teams in order to ensure all programming needs are fulfilled.

In the content creation
division, Karen Gelbart will serve as the senior VP of lifestyle content and
oversee the content strategy—including commissioning, acquiring,
scheduling and budgeting of programming—for CanWest’s lifestyle channels,
a role she held at Alliance Atlantis for the past two years. Meanwhile,
Christine Shipton serves as the senior VP of drama and factual content. She
will oversee all development and commissioning of dramatic and factual
programming for CanWest’s specialty channels and priority programming slates
for Global and E!

As the senior VP of
strategic programming for specialty networks, Daniel Eves is responsible for
the strategic programming direction and schedules for all drama and factual
specialty networks. He will be working with the content creation and
acquisition teams to create program schedules, and with marketing and sales to
support and maximize channel viewership. He has worked at CanWest for more than
two years. Prior to that he worked at Alliance Atlantis. Also in the scheduling
department, Zev Shalev will serve as the VP of strategic programming for E!,
overseeing the network’s schedule to maximize ratings and revenue in concert
with the other content groups as well as sales and marketing. Shalev is also the
senior executive producer of ET Canada.

Andrew Janik will serve as
the VP of program operations and will be responsible for program finance. He
will work alongside the broadcasting finance team to manage the program
budgeting, amortization and forecasting of specialty and conventional networks.
His team will also track the digital media financials, and will oversee program
rights management through CanWest’s S4M system. As an initial project, Janik
will help coordinate the conversion and integration of the company’s two
current content management systems.

Meanwhile, Greg Treffry
will be leading the channel partnerships team as the VP of partner development
and content strategy. He will be responsible for managing and expanding
CanWest’s relationships with network partners, including E!, Rogers, TVA,
Scripps-Howard, BBC, National Geographic, Discovery and IFC. He is tasked with
developing and implementing strategies to leverage partner relationships to
better serve customers. He will also manage CanWest’s minority interests in
Historia, Series +, Scream and One: Body, Mind and Spirit. Additionally, he
will serve as liaison between content and other departments on the development
of new strategies for maximizing the value of content on all platforms.

Laura Tanner will serve as
the senior VP of digital media, and is responsible for leading and delivering
the overall digital media strategy with the goal of extending CanWest’s
existing broadcast content on to the Internet and other digital platforms. She
will also develop original web/mobile content. The digital-media team will work
closely with the sales division to create sellable product. Tanner led the
interactive strategy for Alliance Atlantis for the past four years.

As the senior VP of news
and information, Steve Wyatt will lead news teams across the country in all
local stations as well as the national news. He will work with local news
directors and all the station general managers, overseeing the daily production
of all newscasts and specials from coast to coast. He will also direct the
division in the strategic development of news programming and resources,
current affairs and the deployment of new technologies. He will report to Kathy
Dore, the president of CanWest Broadcasting, on the overall editorial policy
guiding the news division.

All of these team leaders
will report directly to Barbara Williams, the executive VP of content at
CanWest Broadcasting.

“What results from the
combination of these two teams is that CanWest Broadcasting now has the top
talent in every genre and on every platform—lifestyle, comedy, hard news,
drama, documentary, magazine and all the hybrids in between," said
Williams. "I am so impressed with the expertise and the experience of each
and every person, and am truly excited about the potential of this dynamic and
passionate group of programmers."

—By Ned Berke