Fred Seibert's Blog

This post is about two animated spots during MTV’s first year. One’s the most popular, the other was only played once, and not on television.

“One Small Step” from fredseibert on Vimeo.

There were very few “ideas” for spots I could claim as mine at MTV. Identifying talent and strategy were my strengths, and I felt from there everything else would flow. But this spot was different; it’s the one for which I feel complete ownership.

Bob Pittman wanted there to be a signal identification at the top and bottom of each and every hour of MTV: Music Television, where the VJ would identify the most important music videos in that half hour. We agreed it would be voice over animation, with stills IDing the songs.

But, what should the animation be? It had to be memorable, repeatable, and not drive a viewer completely crazy. After all, it was going to play almost 17,000 times every year. And we had only 90 days until launch.

It seemed to me MTV had the most stuck up and conceited view of ourselves. We were completely enamored of the fact that we had no TV shows on our TV networks (a new “show” every three minutes, when a new video started). That was world changing, right? (Well, not really. CNN beat us to it. But we conveniently forgot about that.)

My mentor Dale Pon had introduced me to the treasure trove of free images and film from NASA, a public government entity which we all “owned” as US citizens. It would be an inexpensive source of public domain video for us. As a start-up –no one was really sure this thing would work except us– we needed all the financial short-cuts we could find.

“Space is very rock’n’roll,” said senior producer Marcy Brafman.

This spot was going to be our most important. There would be over 30 changing video pieces every hour (music videos, promos, VJs, and commercials) and this would be the only thing all day that was constant. It would get a lot of scrutiny.

So, I thought the “top of the hour” spot should do it’s job and reflect our conceit, be inexpensive, and use our ever changing logo. Oh right, it had to have that indefinable rock attitude.

I thought the simplest way to combine all that stuff was to steal the shine from an already existing piece of video. Let’s take the most famous television moment ever and fold, spindle, and mutilate it to our nefarious purposes.

Our brainstorming turned up some famous, or really infamous, stuff. The biggest one we thought about was the Lee Harvey Oswald shooting by Jack Ruby that was live on television in 1963. Aside from it’s wrongness, it occurred to me that it was only an American moment. We were claiming that MTV would be “the world’s first video music channel.” We needed a world moment.

Right then it came to me. In the summer of ‘69 I was traveling behind the Iron Curtain with my family on the day of the Apollo 11 moonwalk. The streets of dirt poor Sofia, Bulgaria were chocked with walkers looking for apartments with televisions to witness this seemingly impossible achievement of man. Truly, the most memorable worldwide event in TV history.

Let’s cop it, I figured. The worst that could happen is that a generation of kids would grow up wondering why NASA photoshopped in an American flag with MTV’s used to be.

Alan Goodman and I enlisted Buzz Potamkin’s Perpetual Motion Pictures (soon to be Buzzco) to put together the spot. David Sameth produced for Buzz, Candy Kugel illustrated and directed (logos originally designed and illustrated by Manhattan Design), and music was by John Petersen and Jonathan Elias.

By the way, this version of the spot never ran. The day before launch the lawyers informed me we needed, and would never receive, permission from astronaut Neil Armstrong to use his quotation.

The VMA Moonman

The spot ran more than 75,000 times, through variations of animation and music. Now, it’s sense memory DNA is left in the “Moonman” award from the VMAs (the idea of Manhattan Design’s Frank Olinsky, I believe); no one in the audience knows why it exists. It was only retired, tragically, on January 28, 1986, when the Challenger Shuttle exploded in mid-air. The end of the first space era.

“Freddie Buys It” from fredseibert on Vimeo.

This story’s shorter. A couple of months after the network launch, Bob promoted me to Vice President, MTV’s first (a big deal in those pre-title inflationary days); I was probably whining too much about how hard I was working. He put together a huge congratulatory event and asked Alan to make some video just for the party. He asked director Steve Oakes and producer Peter Rosenthal at Broadcast Arts in Washington DC to modify one of the awesome claymation spots they’d made for us. They put a plasticine me in the spot and ignobly ran me over. I got what I deserved.

Lunch yesterday was at Kate Mantellini’s (white bean chili!) with the lovelies Steve Woolf and Zadi Diaz. These guys are the brilliant minds behind Epic-FU (née the Jetset Show) and you should definitely check them out. Even though we don’t work together right now (Epic-FU used to be distributed by Next New Networks), we hook up every once in a while and learn a little something from each other.

Frame grab from “Top of the Hour”, by Marv Newland/International Rocketship

“The Fred/Alan television branding execution often started with defining a network’s sound.”

Slowly over the last few years I’ve been putting some of my archives online. For me it’s easier to organize than shelves and drawers.

Anyhow, one of the things I uncovered was this fave that I think regular readers of Frederator Blogs are going to love. My partner Alan Goodman and I took one of our favorite doo-wop groups, Eugene Pitt’s The Jive Five, and built the on-air Nickelodeon brand around them.

Frame grab from “The Jive Five”, by Jon Kane/Optic Nerve

With the help of our producer Tom Pomposello, and animators/production companies Eli Noyes & Kit Laybourne, Joey Ahlbum, Colossal Pictures, David Lubell, Jerry Lieberman & Kim Deitch, Marv Newland/International Rocketship, and Jon Kane/Optic Nerve, we established Nickelodeon’s identity at a moment they were teetering on complete and abject failure. And, we had a righteous ball doing it. (You can get the whole story here.)

Fred/Alan IDs 1985-1991 from fredseibert on Vimeo.

Seventy years after Marian Anderson sang this song in protest in Washington DC, Aretha does it right. Congratulations everyone.

This advertising was one of the choice campaigns from one of our pet projects at my ad agency. Like I said a few days ago, in the mid-80s my partner Alan Goodman and I came up with the idea of the first oldies TV network, Nick-at-Nite, and our creative director Noel Frankel developed the ad that was the perfect way to start telling people about our nutty approach to building the identity. Then, writer Bill Burnett kept coming up with the twisted ads for places like TV Guide.

Soon Nick-at-Nite was the most popular cable network in prime time and we needed to start selling some ads. Bill Burnett came up with the idea of a faux editorial campaign for the advertising trade magazines (like Advertising Age and Adweek) from a media pundit, Raul Degado (written by Bill, modeled by Tom Pomposello, who had one outrageous media buying scheme after another, every week. By the end of each column, of course, Nick-at-Nite seemed the perfect real time solution to the advertisers’ problems.

This one could be my favorite. It’s funny, and, it came true!

I suppose you’d have to be a certain age to appreciate this poster my old ad agency created in the 1980s for Nick-at-Nite. Or any of the other ads we made for them. But I wanted to put them up anyway because it’s some of my favorite work from those days (and it’s funny). My partner Alan Goodman and I conceived the idea for the network and built it for Nickelodeon in 1985, and Fred/Alan Creative Directors Bill Burnett and Noel Frankel created the campaign. (You probably know Bill from his cartoon life as the co-creator of ChalkZone and a number of Oh Yeah! Cartoons.)

For whatever it’s worth, I’ll throw in the first written description we put together for Nick-at-Nite, two or three years after it went on the air. You might note that it’s also the first linking of Nick-at-Nite with TV Land (”Hello out there from TV Land!” a variation of the 1950s original “Hello out there in TV Land!”), the precursor to MTV Networks spinning off the 24 hour network called TV Land.

Running into this old article on the origins of the MTV logo (designed by Manhattan Design: Pat Gorman, Frank Olinksky, Patti Rogoff) in my junk recently reminded me of the accidental process that “branding” is and how often the most successful stuff seems to have an innate intelligence that really isn’t there.

Sometimes I watch a great cartoon and marvel about how the creative team thought about something or other, or how smart they were to use the music a certain way, or how they must planned for the world domination they have.

And then I remember. It’s all an accident. Sure there’s talent, often there’s who knows whom, maybe the fix was in. But luck, never underestimate it.

Upper left illustrated by Lou Brooks

I don’t know, I’m asking.

One of my favorite projects back in the day was one few people have ever seen. It started out as a TV network branding assignment, our agency’s specialty, for HA!: The TV Comedy Network. And it led to one of our favorite cartoons that not enough people have seen. Cartoon creator Bill Burnett was at the center of it all.
Viacom’s HA! was their answer to HBO’s Comedy Channel. They both lost the competition and merged into Comedy Central. Some of Fred/Alan’s best work for the network, the naming of Comedy Central, and the conception and writing of the cartoon were all done by Bill (also the co-creator of ChalkZone).

Once our agency helped name HA! we went to work on its branding, figuring out the belief system of the channel. Our creative director, Noel Frankel, designed the distinct shouting logo, with various illustrators and models depicting the shout. Bill led the effort to write dozens of promotional spots, including What is Funny?, probably my favorites.

Bill takes it from here:

“It featured Marc Weil–a member of England’s legendary Madhouse Company of London, asking the question “Is This Funny? I don’t Know, I’m asking” in the face of increasingly bizarre events: For example, he’d be dressed in Judges Robes holding two squealing piglets; then two Mexican banditos would emerge from his robes. Then he’d be chased and lassoed by men in diapers, smoking cigars, and so on. The series was directed by Cliff Fagin, produced by Noh Hands Productions. The recurring What Is Funny? Chorus was performed by Bill Burnett, Suzy Williams and Lori Jacobson. Edited by Chris Strand.”

Find more videos like this on Channel Frederator RAW

The spots ran in 1989 and that was the end of that though they never left my mind. Fast forward about eight years and I was starting my latest set of cartoon shorts for Nickelodeon, Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Bill was one of our early creative signings and I kept bringing up What is Funny? I reminded him that Nick’s owner Viacom already owned the original spots, so why not take a flyer on creating a balls-to-the-wall funny cartoon character based on the same concept. Bill selected former Spumco artist/director Vincent Waller (now a key part of the SpongeBob team) and they were off to the races.

Nick production chief Albie Hecht loved the cartoon. So did CEO Herb Scannell. But I guess it didn’t have the typical cartoon hero at it’s center or something and we could never get series traction. It’s too bad. It’s a damn good cartoon.

Wanna read about cartoons? That’s mainly in the second section down below. Someone asked me for this piece because of my recent rants about the changing media. I believe it has everything to do with you and cartoons, but you might diagree or be too bored with my writing to care. Either way, thanks for hanging around our blogs.

Happy with the mess.
Thanks goodness media is in an upheaval again. As every art form should be. Sure media is a ‘common carrier’ of writing, music, film, and all sorts of art. But media itself is art, an expression. And like everything in art, in order to remain essential it’s got to be turned upside down and shook out ever so often to maintain its vitality. And its viability.

I’m pretty happy with this state of affairs; it seems like most of my baby boomer life it was television exploding network radio and movies, or the Beatles throwing over Elvis and Sinatra. Then as professionals in cable television we rewrote the rules of how TV talked to the world, and watching the beginning of interactive technology and communication alter everything in media that has come before in almost inexplicable ways. For me it’s always been the way of the world. And the way that I work.

TV, the massive bore.
Early in my career I struggled looking for places in the media where the rules weren’t already written (the Beatles influence was pretty clear; the idea of creating wild eyed commercial success crossed with high art held on strongly). Radio sure didn’t have it, music recording should have had it, and television and movies…please! Bob Pittman came along and made me the first member of his new cable programming team and we brought the rules of Top 40 radio to all kinds of television, from music to kids to comedy, and eventually around the world.

Let’s face it, to us 20-somethings, broadcast television was one massive bore, programming to everyone, satisfying no one except the out of touch advertisers.

The rules had been happily, and profitably, established 30 years before and there was an incredible army of conventional wisdom established that didn’t want to be rocked. We just wanted take over the world, so minute by minute and day by day (I’d say show by show, but we didn’t have no TV shows) we dissected how they did it, tore it apart. We reinvented the pieces that didn’t work (and kept the ones that did) and had the conceit that no one else knew how to do what we were doing.

I Want My {Brand} TV.
We were so conceited that when I took the world’s most famous TV moment, the 1969 moon landing, and planted a flag with 100 MTV logos, I joked that six year olds would forever wonder why the official version of the photo had an American flag. (And now those 31 years olds work with me and confirm my worst fears about how communication works.)

Unwittingly we were aided by mature industries (broadcasting and publishing) that had no room for our skills, our talents, or our ideas. There were hundreds of us that were too impatient to wait 20 years to take our place in the middle ranks of media management.

Along the way, the new orthodoxy presented itself:

• No TV stations, just channels.

• Don’t watch a show, watch a channel that talks the way you talk and sings the way you sing.

• It’s not your parent’s channel, it’s not your siblings’ channel, it’s not even all your friends’ channel. It’s your channel.

And my creative, marketing, and programming groups invented a brand new idea. Networks, nah! Shows, nah! Ratings, nah! (At least, not yet.) But what instead?

Brands.

Long before our current, common vocabulary, every channel I worked on was an idea, a community, an audience. A set of beliefs. In marketing: a brand. Add a vanity that our beliefs would not only change the media, but change the world. And now, take a look. MTV is the largest channel in the world, established in more countries than anything else in all of television, and synonymous with youth around the globe. Nickelodeon has more viewing than the children’s viewing of all the broadcasters combined (that is, before they abandoned kids altogether).

Now, if only MySpace and Neopets don’t steal their thunder.

………………………………..
CU Timmy Turner: “Ah? The internet?!?!”
But, of course they will. They’re already doing it.

I now produce cartoons. You know, like Looney Tunes, but newer. Cartoons went through their own paradigm shifts I won’t totally bore you with, but suffice it to say great feature cartoons (like Bugs or Mickey) gave way to simpler, more graphic TV cartoons like the Flintstones. They giving way to ‘animated sitcoms’ –yuck– and got really boring (The Snorks, anyone?). The producers like us who entered in the last generation couldn’t take it anymore and initiated a silver age explosion that resulted in The Powerpuff Girls, The Simpsons, and South Park. And now, they’re even boring! Why? I’ll let others speculate exactly how, but the truth is everything in media always wears out. And the new has to rush in.

What’s the new this time, and how’s it happening?

To quote Timmy Turner from our production of The Fairly Oddparents: “Ah? The internet!?!?”

You bet. All over the media (cartoons, news, sitcoms, whatever) a crucial link is being killed. It’s the network. Or more specifically, the network executive (or a producer like me, for that matter). Makers of all kinds of stuff are talking directly to their customers. Bloggers publish their own newspapers, filmmakers exhibit at their own theatres, cartoons run their own asylums.

Out of frustration with being ignored by the powers that be I’ve worked with regularly for 25 years (and we get in the door, they at least attempt to take us seriously) we’ve started over 50 blogs, and a handful of video networks. Within weeks we’d established millions of monthly viewers and readers and rendered out heretofore
back-room companies to brands with worldwide recognition. Advertisers are knocking on the door, and we’re being consulted daily within the automotive and entertainment industries as to how traditional brands can see the light (one day I’m hopeful they can, depressed the next they’re more interested in only protecting what they have instead of going boldly forward).

And the whole effort is being aided again by the perfect storm of talent and ideas. If you’re a young person with designs on media once again there’s a back-up. Buck the odds and get in the door and you’ll see a ten or fifteen year line ahead of you to get the job (or show) you really wanted in the first place. But, make your own idea, post in at Blogger.com or YouTube.com or ChannelFrederator.com, and you can have 500,000 friends in a couple of days waiting for your next pronouncement (ask my colleague Dan Meth what happened to his video Hebrew Crunk for a real life proof of concept).

The revolution will be televised.
Want to be a star? Want to be a living brand? Don’t wait for MTV, don’t wait for the New York Times, don’t wait for me.

Mostly don’t blame me. From now on you’ve only yourself to look at in the mirror if no one knows you’re alive.

I looked for a picture of Tom Freston smiling, since it’s the state one would most often find him. But he takes his job seriously, so most often the pictures you find are him with a very earnest expression. He’s been tops in the media culture for almost 30 years, but has always kept his kindness, his people, and his mission, front and center.

The reason I mention this is that Tom resigned his positions at Viacom today after 26 years with the company. And the reason I mention that is without Tom Freston I would have no career and no Frederator. Tom and I started together at MTV Networks together in the spring of 1980 and served together at the dawn of MTV: Music Television. When I left to form my consulting/ad agency/production company in 1983 Tom was my client and great supporter. He kept in touch during my years at Hanna-Barbera and then asked me to come back to work with his teams at the end of the 90s.

Tom was a one of a kind of leader. A man who only got better in each succeeding job, he not only kept the profits humming, but, against all odds, kept a unique culture alive in what was essentially a creative company. Since we focus on cartoons here, just look at his tenure: Liquid Television, Beavis & Butthead, Ren & Stimpy, Rugrats, Spongebob Square Pants, South Park, and of course all of our stuff. That’s just in one area of entertainment. He willed Comedy Central into being, he supported Logo, MTVN’s gay & lesbian network, long after the politics shifted against it, and because of his vision MTV is the world’s most distributed television channel in more than 27 different countries.

Thanks for a great ride Tom. We’ll all miss you.