Fred Seibert's Blog

Blog History of Frederator’s original cartoon shorts.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.
Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11. Part 12.

Within months of arriving at Hanna-Barbera I had greenlit two series in the traditional way. But all I could think about was the idea of doing shorts the way I had pitched to Nickelodeon in the late 80s.

Impressed by the passion of the Trembley brothers (creators of SWAT Kats) I put the series into production under the direction of young Hanna-Barbera veteran Davis Doi, who made the show using the mainstream production techniques of the 80s. The creative team worked very hard, and we had a lot of hope for the show but by distributing it through syndication, which had become the weakest way to find a kids’ audience, ultimately the series failed. (Though there are currently 102,000[!] mentions on the internet.)

In the long run the pick-up of 2 Stupid Dogs affected me, Hanna-Barbera, and in fact, the entire cartoon industry, a lot more. Donovan Cook was a recently graduated CalArts animation whipper snapper who came in the office with half a storyboard. It had a great title, it was pretty funny, and it had a graphic style influenced by classic UPA and Hanna-Barbera that I loved (I was such a newbie to the business that I was completely unaware the style had become the mainstream of CalArts graduates who were more interested in cartoons than feature animation.) Donovan’s energy was infectious, and like an idiot I said “go!” on a 13 episode series that had no distribution commitment, half a storyboard, and a creator who’d barely done anything ever before. (The 2 Stupid Dogs story is interesting in and of itself to those who care, but that’ll be for another time.) We assigned another industry old hand, Larry Huber, to partner with Donovan, which turned out to be one of the smarted moves I’ve made in my career.

Little did I know that the most revolutionary thing I’d done in my animation career to that point was not in green lighting these two series, but in allowing the Trembley brothers and Donovan to actually make the series they wanted to make, rather than what our studio system had in store for them.

Simultaneously with these new productions the studio was finishing off shows sold by the previous administration, and my new partner Jed Simmons was trying like hell to turn around the business battleship that was stuck in the bathtub. If we didn’t turn around the downward trend of the financial graph, there was no way Ted Turner and Scott Sassa were going to let us do anything more, no matter how great it was.

And in the meantime, I was talking shorts to anyone who would sit long enough to listen. Some who listened were studio crew who sat because I was the boss, but thought I was a raving lunatic (from their perspective shorts had died 30 years before). Competitors and network executives politely nodded their heads and told me it sounded great (great for them that is; the faster I started this stupid idea, the faster I’d be shipped out of Hollywood). A lot of young folk were cautiously excited because they’d gotten into the business to make cartoons, even though the industry had actually abandoned cartoons years ago.

(More next time.)

Blog History of Frederator’s original cartoon shorts.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.
Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11. Part 12.

Blog History of Frederator’s original cartoon shorts.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.
Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11.

I started as the new President of Hanna-Barbera in June of 1992.

First of all I need to get to know 300 new employees, in a new industry, in a new city. Within hours the development department was coming in with new pitches for series, specials, and feature films. I had absolutely no idea how to decide whether anything was any good, and who was talented enough. Everyone seemed talented.

So I talked with everyone who wanted to talk. Anyone who wanted to give me a theory about what made a hit could get a date with me. Three (or four) meals a day, six or seven days a week. Sometimes a midnight meeting at an artist’s house just to hang out.

One day a writer who’d worked at the studio for 30 years came by with an idea. “Imagine a pig.” OK I can do that. “And he works in a post office.” OK. “But, he’s really a superhero!”

Please, deliver me. Back to New York, preferably.

I told everyone I met about how I loved the Hanna-Barbera classic cartoons. Most of them laughed at me like I was an old fart (41 year old at the time). But along the way I’d run into a few folks, like John Kricfalusi, who enjoyed my interests and helped me to understand a little more about how to do what I wanted to do.

Then one day one of our newer development executives, Margot McDonough, thought there were some younger creative types she thought I might like. No one else with my kind of position would really want to meet them, but, after the pig in the post office I was desperate.

(More next time.)

Blog History of Frederator’s original cartoon shorts.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.
Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11.

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. Part 10.

After suddenly closing my ad agency, getting divorced, and moving to Los Angeles after 25 years in New York, I found myself running a famous company that hadn’t had a hit in over a decade, in a business where I knew almost nothing and no one.

Here’s what my COO partner Jed Simmons and I had to look forward to when we got to Hanna-Barbera in 1992:

The last hit at the studio was The Smurfs in 1981.
Tom & Jerry Kids was a hit on Fox Kids.
Fish Police was being finished up to air in primetime on CBS.
Capitol Critters was being produced with Steven Bochco for ABC.
Once Upon A Forest and The Pagemaster were feature films being made for 20th Century Fox.
Yo Yogi!, the adventures of a teenaged Yogi Bear at the mall, was being finished up for NBC.

One bright note: Eric Homan was cleaning cells in the Animation Art Department.

Had no one in this place ever seen a cartoon? I thought I was going to kill myself.

(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. Part 10.

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.

I’ve been a huge fan of the cartoon music ever since I was a kid and realized there was a difference between Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera. I had an essay written once about the greatness of HB’s Hoyt Curtin (there was already plenty on Carl Stalling), and when I started making cartoons I vowed to pay special attention to the scoring, since I felt it was an essential ‘character’ in a film. So, every once in a while I’d like to pay homage to the great contemporary composers who work on Frederator cartoons.

Guy Moon has produced more scores for us than any other composer; we met through Bodie Chandler, Hanna-Barbera’s music director, a great champion of new artists. Starting with The Addams Family, Guy went on to really prove his chops on the deceptively challenging What A Cartoon! shorts, which led to Cow & Chicken and Johnny Bravo. When we moved over to Nickelodeon Guy would hold the record for the most scores for Oh Yeah! Cartoons, and those in turn led to the lead chair on The Fairly Oddparents and ChalkZone, in addition to one of our movies, The Electric Piper. And Guy’s been no slouch working on other shows and films either. Whew!

Growing up in Wisconsin, going to college in Arizona (loving Chick Corea’s Return to Forever), Guy and his family live in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley.

Thanks Guy, for all your great work.