Michael Hirsh

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Michael Hirsh (born 1948) was one of the three men who helped found Canada's Nelvana studio in 1971. The other two were co-founders, Patrick Loubert (he and Hirsh attendees of York University) Loubert a graduate, and Clive A. Smith. Under co-CEO Hirsh's leadership, his studio has been responsible for many of its animated phenomena.

In 1988, Hirsh saved Nelvana from its first brush with bankruptcy since the failure of their first film, Rock & Rule: when the original distributor of their live-action show, T and T, went out of business, he defied the advice of the studio and found a replacement within six weeks.^[1]

Amid Golden Books Family Entertainment's negotiations to buy Nelvana in late 1996, he went against his co-founders' advice and declined the offer; this led to an argument with the then-COO of the company, Eleanor Olmstead. Golden Books walked out of the deal some time after the incident got noticed.^[1]

In September 2000, Hirsh sold the Nelvana holdings to Corus Entertainment for C$540 million. Two years later, he was the last of the original founders to leave the studio, and went on to become head of the renamed CINAR, Cookie Jar Group. (Paul Robertson soon took the place of Hirsh as Nelvana's CEO.) Recently, he has co-founded Teletoon, Canada's answer to America's Cartoon Network.

Hirsh was born in Brussels, Belgium.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} The Toughest SOBs in Business by John Daly, The Globe and Mail. Retrieved September 28, 2006.

External links

• Michael Hirsh at the Internet Movie Database
• Michael Hirsh at TV.com
• An AWN (Animation World Network) article on Hirsh's involvement in the co-production field (with photo of Hirsh)
• Profile of Hirsh (also includes that of Frederator Studios' Fred Siebert)

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