Fred Seibert's Blog

Albie Hecht is one of my best friends –ah, one of Frederator’s best friends– his company World Wide Biggies –”a New York-based developer of digital entertainment for kids, families and young adults”– has just announced the opening of a digital production studio, an investment raise of $9million, and distribution deals. His partners include co-leaders NBC Universal and Platform Equity, and Hearst Corp., Greycroft Ventures and Prism VentureWorks. Wow.

Nobody’s going to beat Albie and his great team (including our other close friend, and I might add, my first creative hire in television, Scott Webb), nobody. They were early media converts to the transformative power of the interactive digital world’s effect on the traditional television business.

Albie’s one of the cultural stars of the last dozen years. As Herb Scannell’s President of Nickelodeon Entertainment produced an unending string of hits like the humngo series and movie SpongeBob SquarePants, the $100 million movies of A Series of Unfortunate Events and Rugrats, and lately Nick’s runaway success The Naked Brothers Band. And Scott was Nickelodeon’s innovative Worldwide Creative Director for several years; you’ll remember, among other things, his sheparding of the truly original series Pete & Pete, and his mid-90s foresight to be an early internet pioneer with the creation of Nickelodeon Online.

Did I mention that nobody’s going to beat Albie? Congratulations to the Biggies.

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.

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.

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

It’s been a couple of months, but these are my sporadically continuing postings of how we starting producing original cartoons. As usual, feel free to interrupt with any questions.

So, Nickelodeon was not going to exactly follow my suggestions as to how they should get into original animation? So, I was frustrated beyond belief? So, what was I going to do about it?

Nothing.

We weren’t in the animation business. Sure Fred/Alan had a small production company run by our college friend Albie Hecht, and sure, we wanted to produce anything we could, including cartoon shows. But, our main business was network consulting, branding, and advertising, and the animation we were involved with was mainly 10 second network IDs and commercials. And it sure wasn’t the first time our clients had ignored our advice and gone their own way. But, as usual, it wasn’t completely their own way, and they felt like they were following what they saw as the best part of our approach. As we had inculcated into their culture, the network would go off the beaten path looking for skilled talent who could make fresh, animated series that wouldn’t look or feel anything like the mainstream (i.e. Hanna-Barbera), without sacrificing quality. The shows might have a new look, but they’d follow classic entertainment values, they’d include great characters and great stories. And instead of relying only on an in-office pitch, they’d make short pilots to see whether the final film would really ’sing’ before committing to a series.

Fine, I thought. A tenth of a loaf is better than none, better than the times they ignored us completely. And besides, the network production executive was on the phone offering us a deal to make one of the pilots!

Usually we jumped at these kind of phone calls, but this time I was unsure. As I had told Debby and Anne at the very first breakfast, we knew nothing about character based cartoon shows, and while my partners Alan and Albie would probably vehemently disagree (Let’s get a shot at fiction! Any shot!), I felt like it was too complicated for us to come up with an idea, write it, and find one of our animator friends to execute. I told this to the executive, he flatteringly disagreed, and I said send over the deal memo.

(More next time.)

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