Cinar

After their 1976 meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, Micheline Charest, a native of London, England and resident of Quebec, Canada; and Ronald A. Weinberg, born in New York, organized an event for a women's film festival, and worked at distributing foreign films to U.S. theatres. The couple moved to New York City and formed Cinar Corporation, a film and television distribution company.

In 1984, CINAR changed their focus from media distribution to production and moved operations to Montreal, where they concentrated on family-oriented television programming, including Emily of New Moon and The Wombles, as well as the English and French dubs of the anime series Ronin Warriors and The Adventures of Albert and Sidney and the Spain-originating TV series The Adventures of David the Gnome. As a production company, CINAR was also involved in the work of Are You Afraid of the Dark?, The Busy World of Richard Scarry, Madeline (Specials 2-6), The Shoe People and its most well-known work, Arthur, Zoboomafoo and the infamous and terrible Caillou.

## History

Ronald Weinberg and Micheline Charest first met in 1976, marking the beginning of a courtship that led to marriage and the beginning of a business relationship that led to the formation of Cinar. For the couple, Cinar came before marriage. The business was conceived in New Orleans and born in New York City. Charest, a film graduate, traveled to New Orleans in 1976 to attend a film festival. There, she met the festival's organizer, Weinberg, and the pair immediately began making long-term plans for their future together. They moved to New York and, before the end of 1976, started a business named Cinar Films to distribute foreign-language films to art cinemas.

From its start, Cinar was directed by circumstance rather than strategy. Weinberg and Charest struggled to make a living by distributing foreign films. 'New York was very hungry,' Charest recalled in a May 14, 1999 interview with *Canadian Business*. 'We had absolutely no money,' she added. To supplement what little income they generated by peddling foreign films, the couple was forced by necessity into the field of animation. They purchased foreign cartoons, dubbed the cartoons in English, and sold the short animated features to customers in the United States. Neither Weinberg nor Charest had any experience in animation--and presumably little interest in the field--but the combination of the two businesses enabled them to pay their bills. Subsistence was the primary objective during this first era of Cinar's history, a period that endured for approximately seven years. The fortunes of the company and the expectations of Weinberg and Charest improved dramatically once the couple left New York. It was a move forced by necessity.

In 1984, Weinberg and Charest became parents. The birth of their first son caused the couple to reevaluate their approach to Cinar and choose a less expensive setting in which to raise a child. The years of eking out a living in New York were over. The family moved to Montreal, back to Charest's native province, where the cost of living was much lower and, as it would happen, where the business climate was primed for Cinar's growth. Weinberg and Charest were greeted by a federal government receptive to the dreams of aspiring filmmakers, a mood, most importantly, that was expressed financially. The Canadian government was subsidizing the country's film industry, which existed in the shadow of the much larger film industry across the border. Through tax reductions and the dispensation of funds, the government hoped to promote the growth of Canadian film companies, which provided the financial means required to make a small company like Cinar a profit-making success.

More good news awaited them after they settled in Montreal. At the time, newly founded cable networks in the United States were beginning to capture the attention of viewers, but they were in dire need of programming to fill their daily broadcast schedules. It was the emergence of the burgeoning U.S. cable industry coupled with the financial support from federal coffers that gave Weinberg and Charest an opportunity to succeed. The move to Montreal gave them the means and the market to develop Cinar into a legitimate production house, but at first the couple operated Cinar as a distribution company. Once the transformation was complete, Cinar emerged as a major player in the entertainment industry, both in Canada and in the United States.

Faced with far greater prospects in Montreal than in New York, Weinberg and Charest began talking with several cable stations. They entered into agreements with a number of cable broadcasters, including Nickelodeon, to air Cinar productions. The couple began distributing European and Japanese cartoons to its new customers before branching out into production. Working with Japanese and American partners, Cinar created its first original animated production in 1987, *The Wizard of Oz,* narrated by Margot Kidder. The program was followed by a series of Cinar productions, as the company focused on the new cable and specialty channel market to lay its foundation as a production house. Toward this end, the company's first original production established characteristics that would define its success in later years. Cinar became known as a producer of non-violent children's programming, creating 'pro-social' content hailed by critics during the 1990s. The company also enjoyed a solid reputation for converting children's books into animated programs, a niche in the entertainment industry that Cinar would exploit to its advantage. In Cinar's *The Wizard of Oz*, both of the company's defining talents were demonstrated, establishing important precedents for future Cinar programming. Although symbolically significant, the company's inaugural production did not make the Cinar name widely known throughout the North American entertainment industry.

At approximately the same time Weinberg and Charest first met in New Orleans, Marc Brown created what would become a hugely successful character named Arthur. Half-aardvark, half-eight-year-old boy, Arthur was created by Brown as the central character in bedtime stories he read to his daughter. Eventually, Brown wrote a series of books featuring Arthur, but the author refused numerous requests to turn Arthur into a television series. 'I just knew what would happen to Arthur,' Brown said in the May 14, 1999 issue of *Canadian Business*. 'In no time, they'd have him carry a weapon in his backpack.'

Brown rejected all proposals to make Arthur a television character until 1994, when he met Carol Greenwald. Greenwald represented the Public Broadcasting Service's station in Boston, WGBH. In contrast to commercial networks, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) received its programming from its member stations, and WGBH ranked as the network's largest producer of programming. Greenwald prevailed where others had failed by convincing Brown that an Arthur television series could be used to encourage children to read. Once Brown agreed to the project, Greenwald had won only half the battle, however. WGBH did not own its own animation studio, so a producer had to be found, one who could support the project financially and one whom Brown could trust to preserve the sanctity of Arthur. A worldwide search was begun, as Greenwald and Brown spent months visiting production houses around the globe. After a lengthy vetting process, Cinar emerged as the winner, giving Weinberg and Charest the project that would cement their reputation as industry leaders.

Cinar's production of *Arthur* was an unmitigated success. By the end of the decade, after garnering Daytime Emmy awards in 1998 and 1999, the show ranked as the most popular preschool series in the United States. Weinberg and Charest reached celebrity status within the industry, earning praise for their ability to transform children's books into popular, nonviolent television programs. A handful of other Cinar-produced programs added further confirmation of the couple's talents. Programs such as *The Busy World of Richard Scarry*, *The Adventures of Paddington Bear*, and *Are You Afraid of the Dark?* turned Cinar into a leading production house not only in North America but overseas as well. By the end of the 1990s, the company supplied programming in 40 languages to roughly 150 countries, boasting more programming on television in France, for instance, than any other producer in the world. Revenues inched past the $100 million mark in 1998, and Weinberg and Charest, who had formed international alliances with Viacom, Sony, Time Warner, and Polygram, benefited enormously from the financial success of their company. In 1999, the couple's stake in Cinar was worth an estimated $151 million.