Each year, Caldwell Partners International chooses 40 Canadians who were under 40 in the past year to honour for their outstanding achievements. Click here to learn more about the program, and find more winners in the list below.
Canadians who want their MTV can thank Bradley Schwartz for giving it to them. In the fall of 2005, the Toronto native left New York, where he had been working for MTV Networks as director of global marketing, to start the wildly popular music video channel in Canada.
“There was no business plan, no staff – it was just me and a building,” recalls Mr. Schwartz, who had returned to Toronto as part of CTV Inc., which had forged a strategic alliance with the owner of MTV Networks, Viacom Inc., allowing it to launch the MTV brand in Canada. “It was an extraordinary moment in my life.”
Mr. Schwartz immediately began looking for “the best people I could find” to lead MTV’s key departments, including programming, advertising sales, communications, digital, marketing and brand partnerships. Right from the start, he says, he was sure he could make a success of MTV in Canada by building a strong and talented team.
He was right. Within five years, MTV Canada has grown exponentially in ratings and revenue, says Mr. Schwartz. A number of the shows it has produced – such as The After Show, Peak Season, 4REAL, and 1 Girl 5 Gays – have found their way to global audiences.
“It’s been an unbelievable ride,” says Mr. Schwartz, who studied at Trinity College School in Port Hope, about 100 kilometres east of Toronto, before moving to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he studied communications and marketing.
In 2007, CTV’s parent company, Bell Globemedia, acquired CHUM Limited, whose assets included MTV’s rival channel MuchMusic. After the acquisition, Mr. Schwartz became senior vice-president and general manager of the Much MTV Group. This put him in charge of both MTV and MuchMusic plus other media properties that included MuchMore, MTV2, PunchMuch, MuchVibe, MuchLOUD and MuchMoreRetro.
Mr. Schwartz says he has had many surreal moments over the past five years.
“It’s amazing, walking into the building every day and walking by the studio where U2 has been, where Madonna and Lady Gaga have performed, and to be able to meet basically every major artist,” he says.
Mr. Schwartz attributes his success partly to his belief that “creativity rules” – something he learned from his first mentor, Saturday Night Live creator and fellow Canadian Lorne Michaels, for whom he worked as an assistant for a year.
“It was an unbelievable education,” says Mr. Schwartz. “The year I was there, we were also producing Kids in the Hall, Wayne’s World and Coneheads, and it was the year they created the Conan O’Brien show – I got to be a part of seeing that happen.”
At the end of March, Mr. Schwartz left Much MTV to become senior vice-president of programming and operations at FUSE, a New York-based network with programming similar to Much MTV.
“It’s a new challenge for me, another opportunity to grow a network,” he says. “I’m really going to miss it here.”
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