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.