Fred Seibert

Frederick "Fred" Seibert (born September 15, 1951) is an American television and film producer and media entrepreneur. He owns Frederator Studios. Seibert has held leading positions with MTV Networks, Hanna-Barbera, and Next New Networks and has worked in visual media for 30 years.^{[citation needed]} He has directed programs on cable television,^[1] animation,^[2] and the internet.^[3]

Early career

Seibert began his media career in college radio at Columbia University's WKCR-FM in 1969. While at Columbia he started his first company, Oblivion Records with partner Tom Pomposello, releasing LP's by Mississippi Fred McDowell and Joe Lee Wilson. He was an early employee of New Music Distribution Services, a non-profit distributor of musician owned record company started by composers Carla Bley and Michael Mantler, before going on the road with Bley's big band as sound engineer and road manager. A late 1970s stint with media promotion innovator Dale Pon at New York's WHN radio, Seibert began his work at MTV Networks in 1980.

Cable television

Seibert was MTV's first creative director and guided its original voice and visual identity, creating hundreds of promotions, advertisements, and station IDs for the channel, and responsible for a rethinking of how television channels promoted themselves as "brands." He also commissioned and approved the mutating MTV logo, despite network executives objections to a logo that did not remain constant.^[4][5] He led the team that developed "I Want My MTV!", one of the most famous advertising campaigns of the late 20th century.^[6]

In 1985, with partner Alan Goodman at Fred/Alan Inc., Seibert successfully overhauled the then-floundering children's cable channel Nickelodeon, moving it from worst to first in the ratings in six months;^[7] and conceived and executed the Nick-at-Nite concept.^[8]

Cartoons

From 1992 until 1996, as the last president of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon studio, Seibert was able to reinvigorate the company's creative reputation with the establishment of the animation incubator What A Cartoon!.^[9] Modeled on the Golden Age of mid-20th century cartoons, the 48 short films from creators around the world, Hanna-Barbera was able to launch seven hit series after a dry spell since the launch of the Smurfs in 1983 for NBC. The shows included Genndy Tartakovsky's Dexter's Laboratory, David Feiss' Cow and Chicken and I Am Weasel, Van Partible's Johnny Bravo, John R. Dilworth's Courage the Cowardly Dog, and Craig McCraken's The Powerpuff Girls.

After Ted Turner included Hanna-Barbera's in Turner Broadcasting's 1996 sale to Time Warner Seibert established Frederator Studios as an independent animation producer based in Burbank, California.

Frederator has established itself as a major American independent with 10 series on Nickelodeon (like Butch Hartman's The Fairly OddParents), Cartoon Network (Pendleton Ward's Adventure Time), and Cartoon Hangover (Pendleton Ward's Bravest Warriors). They have also innovated into the internet with Channel Frederator, Cartoon Hangover, and Next New Networks.

After starting Frederator Studios in 1998, Seibert brought together a group of investors to attempt to save the troubled underground comix publisher Kitchen Sink Press.

Internet and video

Building on this new media success, in 2007 Seibert conceived and founded Next New Networks (with Emil Rensing, Herb Scannell, Tim Shey, and Jed Simmons),^[10] the leading online television company, with over 2 billion all time video views^[11] and over 200 million views every month (as of 2010). Along with their affiliated Indy Mogul, Barely Political, Channel Frederator and several other networks, the company's superdistribution has allowed it to become among the most widely distributed video in the world, and to become YouTube's top professional content provider. By the end of 2010, Next New Networks had the globe's top two videos viewed on YouTube.^[12] In March 2011, Next New Networks was acquired by YouTube.^[13][14][15]

In 2004 David Karp interned at Frederator Studios at its first New York City location, and built their first blogging platform.^[16] In 2007 he launched Tumblr from a rented desk at Frederator Studios' Park Avenue South offices, with chief engineer Marco Arment.^[17][18] Seibert was one of Tumblr's first bloggers.^[19]

On February 21, 2012, Fred Seibert launched Cartoon Hangover, a channel on Youtube which consists of various animated shorts and series. Cartoon Hangover gained a much larger audience with the revival of Bravest Warriors by Pendleton Ward on November 8, 2012^[20] which originally aired as a pilot on Fred Seibert's Random! Cartoons on Nicktoons Network in 2009.^[21]

Feature films

In June 2007, Fred Seibert (alongside Racer Max Warner of Newgrounds.com) founded Frederator Films (now known as Ventrilocompany-Frederator Films Video) to produce animated feature films.^[22] They are currently in pre-production on Genndy Tartakovsky's Samurai Jack with co-producer J. J. Abrams and have set up their first two animated features in a first look production arrangement for Sony Pictures Animation.^[23]

References

External links

• Official website
• Fred Seibert at the Internet Movie Database
• [http://mag.awn.com/index.php?article_no=1800. Animation World News] interview (2003)
• Essay by Steven Heller at AIGA.org (American Institute of Graphic Arts) (PDF)