Fred Seibert's Blog

Blog History of Frederator’s original short cartoons.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.
Part 7. Part 8. Part 9.

After trying, and failing, to convince Nickelodeon to go “back to the future” of animation, and use classic cartoon style shorts to create their innovative entry into the animated programming biz (they did better than great without me), my company continued to consult cable TV networks on branding and advertising.

“So,” said Scott Sassa, President of Ted Turner’s entertainment networks, “do you want to come out to Hollywood and run Hanna-Barbera for us?”

Was he crazy?!

I’d been a jazz record producer, a cable television promotion executive, and a marketing and branding entrepreneur; one thing I certainly was not was a producer of cartoons. Sure, I’d had my hand in making a few TV series, but they were mainly run by my partners, Alan Goodman and Albie Hecht. And it was clear I loved cartoons; I often loudly proclaimed that my childhood of cartoon watching was the best preparation for the groundbreaking work we did with rock’n’roll and television on MTV. But, actually make the cartoons? How was I supposed to do that? I knew next to nothing about cartoon production, I knew absolutely nothing about scripts and stories, and I knew nothing about how Hollywood worked. And Hollywood was the home of Hanna-Barbera Productions, and one of the reasons Ted Turner wanted to studio to begin with.

The announcement of my becoming President of Hanna-Barbera Productions was made the day of the LA riots in April of 1992; I started full time in June. Shown my giant corner office, originally built as Bill Hanna’s when the building opened in 1961, I was so frightened I didn’t sit at the custom built desk for over six months; I just parked myself on one corner of Bill’s couch and just shivered every day as studio staff and others came in one by one wanting something resembling smarts from me.

But unlike some of my friends and colleagues, I loved Hanna-Barbera. Especially the great early years, when Joe Barbera and his crack team invented Huckleberry Hound, Yogi, The Flintstones and the others, and Bill Hanna streamlined the animation production systems into the unlimited imagination of limited animation (thanks Billll Burnett). And I remembered the charge I’d been getting for the fifteen years I’d been traveling to Los Angeles and passing that great building with the “HANNA-BARBERA” sign up on the top.

And, I had this nutty idea about shorts.

(More next time.)

Blog History of Frederator’s original short cartoons.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.
Part 7. Part 8. Part 9.

Blog History of Frederator’s original short cartoons.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.
Part 7. Part 8.

Our career making cartoons was over before it began. We continued to consult on cable network branding and promoting Nickelodeon’s first original slate of animation, but it looked that our idea of using shorts to find the new generation of stars was going to be another one of those ‘coulda been’ things.

Alan Goodman and I had been involved in more than 10 years of building, branding, and programming cable TV networks and we were a little bored by it. Everyone wanted to know our secrets, but were more interested in paying for programming than branding. Never shy, I kept whining and by February of 92 we were completely exasperated at an endless, annoying negotiation with MTV Networks; we woke up on a Tuesday morning and announced the end of our company after 12 years. No plans, no nothing, just please make it stop.

The very next morning Scott Sassa, then the President of Ted Turner’s entertainment networks (eventually President of the NBC Television Network) and always on top of the best gossip, called and told me he’d heard about our closing, reminding me that Turner had just purchased the venerable Hanna-Barbera cartoon studio. Half listening I glanced down at my cartoon watch; it was 10:35am and, believe it or not, at 12 was Fred Flinstone, 3 was Yogi Bear, 6 was Scooby, and 9 was Huckleberry Hound! (It’s not the watch up above, by the way. When I find it, I’ll snap a pic and replace it.)

“So,” says Scott, “do you want to come out to Hollywood and run Hanna-Barbera for us?”

(More next time.)

Blog History of Frederator’s original short cartoons.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.
Part 7. Part 8.

Blog History of Frederator’s original short cartoons.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.
Part 7.

When we last left off our story (before yesterday’s philisophical diversion), in 1989 Nickelodeon had decided that our idea of doing 1940s styled short cartoons was mostly wrong, but kind of right. Instead, against current TV tradition, using our advice they were going to pilot animated series with off-the-beaten-track, alternative animation studios. They offered my company, Fred/Alan, one of the first pilots.

Nickelodeon’s programming executive sent over their deal memo as promised. I took a look at it and called him back.

“So I see there are ten deal points.”

“Yes,” the network executive said.

“And the first is that if you’re unhappy with our work –our work on our original cartoon– you can fire us at any time and replace us with a producer of your choice. On our cartoon.”

“Yes.”

Now, I was used to the fact that the world had changed when it came to the business of cable television. In traditional broadcasting (CBS, NBC, & ABC), because of a bunch of arcane legal mumbo jumbo, it was common practice that a network could not own any part of a program, the producer owned it all. Cable was not bound by any ownership restrictions, and it was already common practice that the network could own everything, the producer nothing, and if you wanted your show on the air that was the deal. We didn’t particularly like it, but we had accepted it as the way business was done. But, we didn’t much like the idea that a punk executive like the one we were dealing with enjoyed rubbing it our faces so much. I mean, OK you own it all you control it all you can tell us what to do and you can fire us at any time. But, gimme a break; at least make it point 7 of 10. Don’t humiliate us with your power right up top.

With the permission of my partners Alan Goodman and Albie Hecht I asked, “Have you ever heard the sound of paper ripping over the telephone?”

Our career in cartoons was over before it began.

(More next time.)

Blog History of Frederator’s original short cartoons.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.
Part 7.

Over a year ago I started what I figured would be a quick round-up of how we got to where we are today in the short cartoon game. But with the launch of Channel Frederator in November things got a lot busier than I would have ever imagined. And we haven’t even gotten to the first short we made. So here’s the first six posts and we’ll pick up where we left off.

Blog History of Frederator’s original short cartoons.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.

Looking back on the first parts of this story and the almost 20 years since it started I realize we’ve mid-wifed almost 150 original short cartoons and over 1000 more their creators made when the shorts prospered as series. All in the face of an industry that to this day has virtually abandoned the short form which had made it rich (historians like Jerry Beck or Michael Barrier are in a better position to speculate why it happened). The obvious question would be why beat our heads against the wall so constantly when it might be easier to do what everyone else is doing?

To begin with when confronted with the idea of actually being involved with making cartoons I looked around to see what cartoons were the greatest ever. Not the best of the day (late 80s) but the best of all time. Like everyone else I’m a product of my past (I’m 54, so I started watching screens in the early 1950s) so my first exposure to cartoons was the shoveling of theatrical cartoons from the first half of the 20th century onto the fledgling medium of television. From Farmer Gray to Disney shorts, from Out of the Inkwell to Mighty Mouse I was in love with them all. But, of course, I mostly loved the Looney Tunes, which then and now, I thought were absolutely unparalleled. So the first seed of shorts addiction was in by 1960.

Like most people (though not most of this blog’s readers) I stopped watching cartoons regularly around 11 or 12 and graduated to pop music, propelled by the Beatles coming to America in 1964. So begins another devotion to a short form of popular culture, the Top 40. No matter where my musical travels have brought me, from art-rock through avant-garde jazz, the economy of pop from Benny Goodman to The Beatles to Nirvana has been, for me, the cornerstone of the one of the most inventive arts to have descended onto earth.

My initial instinct when asked about making cartoons was to make them like the ultimate, like Looney Tunes. Not that I thought we could ever equal them, and, of course, I had no idea how Looney Tunes were made; my initial thoughts, had they been implemented would have been abject failures. But when I met John Kricfalusi he gave me a quick tutorial on the primacy of the artist in cartooning, and with further discussions with Joe Barbera, Bill Hanna, Friz Freleng and others I decided that I would attempt to make cartoons primarily created by artists/animators/directors rather than writers or executives (not to ignore either, but rather, to put them in their appropriate place in the creative mix). And it seemed to me (still does) that a short form is a better form to start films with artists. Cartoons are more character based than story and plot driven, and rather than put artist/creators at disadvantage, the short form could allow the artist with character and story predilections to be at his or her strongest from the get go. Shorts seem like the ideal artist film medium.

So, from the beginning the wallop and the sense of the short form sat right with me. Let’s emulate the greatest ever and since the greatest were short (averaging around seven minutes), by golly, come hell or high water, that’s what we were going to do.

(More next time. Soon, I hope.)

Blog History of Frederator’s original short cartoons.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.

Right around the time we started up Frederator and Oh Yeah! Cartoons my childhood bud from Long Island Jeff Eberhardt (we met when we were three and we were great friends past college) called and asked would I meet with his daughter? Jen had just moved to Hollywood and wanted to get started as an actress and maybe do some voice overs. I don’t think I was much help, though later on I tried to hook her up with Steve Marmel’s stand-up web community, but I remember telling Jeff I thought she had the drive to go the distance.

Fast forward nine years and I didn’t pay enough attention to Jun Falkenstein’s post about her very cool Kyle & Rosemary cast. Or I just didn’t put 2+2 together (What do you want? I’m the doofus producer. Or else I’m just too old.) Because Jeff’s daughter is Jentle Phoenix, the voice of Gothy Rosemary.

Congratulations to all of us. The world’s a small place. I love it when this kind of thing happens.

Justin Simonich was in our New York office today again with his partner Dagan Moriarty with a new cartoon for Oh Yeah! Cartoons called Circus Folks. Justin’s currently writing at USA Networks and Dagan is drawing at Animation Collective.

Thanks to Justin & Dagan for kind permission to post their cartoon artwork.

We met Eileen Brennan during the dot com boom when she was part of a flash animation studio in Scranton, Pennsylvania and then again at our New York office again when she relocated with her very cool band. She’s also a wonderful painter. Eileen has written a few scripts for our show (created by Bob Boyle) Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! and had a cartoon in the very first episode of Channel Frederator.

Today she showed us one of her unique creations –Pilot CoPilot– for Oh Yeah! Cartoons.

Thanks to Eileen for kind permission to post a drawing from her cartoon.

The guys from Charged –Alex Cohn, Adam Pierce, & Kevin Maher– came into our New York office early last week to show us their animated/puppet short called AstroNuts in Outer Space.

Thanks guys-from-Charged for kind permission to post your art.

Lee Corey was by our New York office to pitch his short called Loyd & Floyd. Lee’s studio has lately been concentrating on animated content for mobile phones. He was his usual friendly self, and I must give him personal thanks for his patience in letting my 10 year old son sit through his pitch and give target audience notes.

Thanks to Lee for his kind permission to post some of his storyboard.

They’re moving in for number 2.

Manny & Alan aren’t the first and they won’t be the last of this season’s creators to try for a second short. Yesterday they came by with the unique sci-fi comedy Dogstar.

Everyone better hurry, we’re down to the wire.