Channel Frederator Blog

Culture reporter Amber Ray recently did an interview with Fred for Metro (61 daily editions in 88 major cities in 19 countries in 18 languages across Europe, North & South America and Asia). We thought we’d share some of it before it gets published:

What is the philosophy behind Channel Frederator? Why create an animation podcast specifically for adults?

“Frederator Studios started in 1998 to make ‘original cartoons,’ not cynical animated adaptations of a popular live action movie or the latest toy trend. We feel that we’ve successfully been able to meld the concept of ‘personal films’ (no need to limit it to the Sundance Film Festival) and popular cartoons.

“Channel Frederator came out of our conversations with television viewers. There’s so much wonderful animated filmmaking talent around the world, and a great audience demand for it, but old school television doesn’t really have much room. We felt if we could put some of the cartoons we see every day in front of an them –and video podcasting allows us to distribute without any media gatekeepers– we’d be able to gather up a huge community of like-minded fans. And it sure seems to be working.

“The other thing about traditional TV is the baby boomer notion that adults don’t like cartoons, even with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. There are literally hundreds of hours of kids cartoons that air every week in America, but a miniscule fraction for everyone else. We figure that Channel Frederator’s success is one more step to upending those networks’ assumptions.”