Pop’s President on His Network’s Biggest Year Ever—and Its Future as Part of ViacomCBS

Pop may be a smaller cable network—the former TV Guide Network rebranded in 2015—but it’s been making a lot of noise this year. In March, CBS bought out Lionsgate’s stake in Pop to become the network’s sole owner, paving the way for Pop to pick up One Day at a Time in June, three months after Netflix canceled the sitcom. Then, Pop’s signature show, Schitt’s Creek, finally broke into the Emmy race in its fifth season, landing four nominations, including outstanding comedy series, best actor and best actress. Despite Pop’s momentum this year, its seemingly bright future may have potentially dimmed a bit now that parent company CBS will be merging with Viacom, which already has several basic cable networks of its own. Pop president Brad Schwartz spoke with Adweek about his network’s euphoric year, and its future as part of ViacomCBS: The following has been edited for length and clarity. Adweek: Prior to CBS buying out Lionsgate, had you done any lobbying on your end to get either company to make that kind of move? Schwartz: No. The only lobbying I did was to get more money. As a joint venture of these two unbelievable media companies, we had a wonderful and generous board, but where you ran into a little bit of trouble was as a joint venture, nobody really wanted to invest. So the lobbying I always did was, “Look at this business plan, look what we can become. Let’s think differently than the rest of the industry is. I’m not saying we’re going to grow our sub[scriber] rate 50%, but if we could get this done, then I think we could get to here. And the bigger platform we become, the better it is for both of you.” You ran a marathon of CBS’ Love Island episodes during that show’s run this summer. Are we going to see more things like that going forward as part of CBS? Absolutely, yes. That is one of my strategic goals for this channel. Now that we are part of CBS and we’re the only fully distributed general entertainment network that they have, there are amazing assets across the entire company that aren’t fully being monetized. I believe every major media network company needs a general entertainment catch-all channel to fully monetize things. Could we become a really big general entertainment network that still focuses on really smart, comedic-leaning original content, but is a place to do more mid-season catchup marathon for Survivor, a repeat of the Grammys, Big Brother After Dark, a Love Island aftershow, a marathon of a prior season of some show into the new episode tonight on CBS or Showtime? There are assets around the company that are sitting there ready to be monetized that aren’t being fully monetized, that we could use to build our network, drive more revenue and more ad sales, and also support the rest of the company. Now that they’ve renewed Love Island for a second season, I think you can see Pop really support that a lot more in the second season and we would love to. Now there’s the Viacom news. You talked about being CBS’ basic cable network, but what does that mean for Pop in a world where you’re with all of Viacom’s cable networks? I really don’t know. I can’t speculate. I love Joe [Ianniello, the acting CBS CEO]. He’s been amazing. I love [CBS Corp. chief creative officer] David Nevins. He’s amazing. I’ve worked for Bob Bakish [the Viacom CEO, who will be CEO of the combined ViacomCBS] before when he was running [Viacom] International and I was running MTV Canada. We’ll see. Like I said, I think there’s room for a successful broad general entertainment network. We’ll see. We don’t know. How soon after Netflix said they were cancelling One Day at a Time did you start to kick the tires on that show? Pretty much immediately. When we saw it was canceled, I sent an email out to our team, saying, “We should look at this. This is a perfect show for us.” Two days later, I get an email from Joe Ianniello: “Are you guys looking at One Day at a Time?” I’m like, this is good. Then I went to Nevins, and that’s when he informed me that CBS All Access was looking at it, so let’s let that play out. I had to take a back seat to CBS All Access, and as you’ve read about in the press, Netflix wouldn’t let it go to another SVOD service. As soon as that happened, I went back to David and I’m like, “So, is it our turn now?” [laughs] And we went after it. [kickout id="2"] Had Pop ever pursued a canceled show before? Nashville, because of Lionsgate [which produced it], and The Royals. When Nashville was canceled, it was like a perfect show for us. We just couldn’t afford it. We couldn’t make it work with Nashville and it ended up going to CMT and Hulu. The Royals was the same thing. We were very close in trying to continue The Royals after E! canceled it, because what might not have been a big number for E! would have been a very big number for Pop. But we couldn’t get it done. Then right after you made the One Day at a Time deal, you got four Emmy nominations for Schitt’s Creek, which is rare for a show that far into its run. Why do you think you were able to finally break through? I like to compare it to compounded interest. The show has grown every single year. Every single year there are new people that hear about the show and go back to Season 1 and catch up. All five seasons are available on demand, and on our app. Four seasons are on Netflix. It’s now on Roku [and CW Seed]. It’s always been a great show, but the show has gotten better year over year. I thought we had a shot at an Emmy after Season 4—and then Season 5 was better than Season 4. When you look at the numbers on Pop, on our app, on demand, what we know from Netflix that you take with a grain of salt and from Roku, at this point, millions of people watch every episode. And it just got to the point where the passion for the show got enough people to vote for it. Of course, this adulation comes as the show is entering its last season. Are you figuring out other things to do with co-creator and star Dan Levy? I’ve worked with Dan for about 12 years. We’ve had two huge successes together and I would love to find a third. Right now he is very focused on crafting Season 6. When he’s done, he has a lot of dreams and aspirations of what to do next and we’d love to be a part of it. When the time is right and when he wants to, I’ll do anything with him. [kickout id="1"] How has the combination of landing One Day at a Time and those Schitt’s Creek nominations changed who is coming to your door with projects? When you look at the names of the networks that are nominated for best drama and best comedy, you see the Netflixes and HBOs and the Showtimes and the FXs, and then you’ve got little Pop sitting there. It’s pretty amazing. What it shows is that there’s this team of people over there that, even though they’re smaller and they might not be able to outspend you, they can outwork you. And, “Damn, that’s the place I want to be. I’d rather be the No. 1 show on a smaller network than the No. 8 show on a bigger network.” I’ve seen it in the social media of the One Day at a Time producers where they’re like, “So excited to be on Pop. Look at our new network. Four Emmy nominations. This is the place to be!” Where maybe two or three years ago, you wouldn’t have thought that way. The fact that we can break through at something like the Emmys means other people are going, “Hey, I want to work with that team.” The team has always been great, but getting these Emmy nominations certainly puts a little spotlight on it.

Programming & Performance

Pop’s President on His Network’s Biggest Year Ever—and Its Future as Part of ViacomCBS

Brad Schwartz talks Schitt’s Creek’s Emmy surprise and getting One Day at a Time from Netflix

Jason Lynch

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Jason Lynch