Fred Seibert's Blog

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.

Oh Yeah! Cartoons, started in 1998, but our minds were on original cartoons as far back as the 80s.

Blog History of Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Part 1.

Quickly improvising, I put all the meager knowledge I had of cartoons and the cartoon biz into a jumble of sentences.

The way I looked at it was Looney Tunes were considered the cartoon ideal of my Beatle-like view of contemporary art and culture; the films were the height of the art and unbelievably popular too. A great one-two punch. They were also short (cheaper to make than a half hour series), funny (kids like funny better than anything over the long run), and eclectic (sure, Bugs was the star, but they tried dozens of characters over the years to find their hits).

(Of course, this fit my view of our interests too. In my mind, I was trying to get my company into this new Nick/animation equation. If I could weave a senario that was unique in the contemporary landscape, who else would they entrust this new effort too, but the innovative folks at Fred/Alan?)

Nickelodeon prided itself as doing kids TV differently than the conventional wisdom (remember, this was the 80s, when Saturday morning television ruled the roost in the family industry, when tired formulas and commercialized toy-animation was seen as the only profitable route, when cynical executives decreed foolishness about kids every day).

It seemed this approach to lots of shorts by off-the-beaten-path talent was the perfect path for Nick to travel into animation.

Debby and Ann were enthusiastic. Looked like I was in like Flynn. Sort of.

(More next time.)
Blog History of Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Part 1.

We keep getting asked about how we started making original cartoons like the ones in Oh Yeah!, so I thought it might be good occasionally to post a bit of the back story here. Feel free to interrupt with any questions.

In the early 80s, after getting my start in TV as MTV’s original creative director, Alan Goodman and I had started Fred/Alan, the first company to introduce the concept of branding to television networks. Our first client, and first success, was the relaunching of Nickelodeon, where we made them the number one cable channel in six months. (Amazingly, since they’d been the lowest rated network in America.)

Chief programmer Debby Beece and business head Anne Sweeney asked me to breakfast at New York’s Paramount Hotel sometime in 1988 or 89, and said it was necessary for Nickelodeon to seriously start producing it’s own programming, and they wanted to start with animation. Since Alan and I had brought hundreds of wild, award-winning, animated network identifications to the channel, did I have any idea how they could get started? Honestly, other than random conversations I’d had with NY commercial producer Buzz Potamkin, I’d never given animated programming much thought. We were branding and promotion specialists, I reminded them, with no background in storytelling, and there was a world of difference between little 10 second dancing animals (as wonderful as they might be) and comedy. Debby and Ann insisted we were the ones to help them out, and I began improvising.

Why not copy from the best, I suggested. Why not emulate Looney Tunes?

(More next time.)