Robin Schwartz, the third president of boutique TV studio Regency Television, is on a mission to assure that the “writers-driven studio” developed under Gail Berman, will thrive.
Schwartz has learned many lessons from her early days in the business about the need to assert herself.
"Schwartz learned a valuable lesson that day about asserting herself, and she shows that same chutzpah today as president of boutique TV studio Regency Television. The former NBC and ABC Family executive is completing her second nail-biting pilot season at Regency, after arriving in February 2004 with development well under way.
"Faced with the loss of almost all of Regency's current programming slate this season, Schwartz has lured heavy hitters like former Cheers and Becker star Ted Danson. She persuaded the reluctant leading man to return to series television in Help Me Help You, an ABC comedy pilot about a psychologist whose life unravels. “That was one of the hardest days of my life,” she says of the Danson meeting. “Ted is so smart and asks so many good questions. He interviewed us like I've never been interviewed before. I was sweating.”
With many of their top series being dropped to the dreaded low-rated Friday night slots, and many about to be abandoned altogether, Schwartz has been courting a lot of big names and strengthening relationships with various network executives which may help Regency make the turnaround it must to survive.
In an interesting comment when asking about whether she would consider moving to a network in the future she answered that she was keeping here options open. “They have a need for people who are passionate, have a point of view and don't care if they get fired the next day, at NBC, if you didn't have an opinion, you were out the door. That's the way we learned to take risks.”
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