fredseibert

[fredseibert]

What’s the difference?

Since I founded both FredFilms and Frederator Studios, I keep getting the same questions.

What’s the difference between Frederator Studios and FredFilms? 

It’s mainly the name. I’m still dedicated to putting creators first, creators who always have an original “voice” and want audiences to love their work. Just like at Frederator, I’m fond of saying that I’m incapable of following trends, so every once in a while, we’ve started trends.* 

Frederator was sold for a variety of (good) reasons, and I left knowing that I was the same person that had guided the studio for two decades. I also know that FredFilms would be a continuation of the same philosophies. 

We might not follow trends, but we’re still dedicated to bringing you your next favorite cartoon. 

So, are you just making movies now? You know, FredFILMS? 

Aren’t animation series creators filmmakers? 

*Like Adventure Time or Castlevania. 

Pendleton Ward’s Adventure Time wasn’t the first, but likely the most influential modern series that had an emotionally complicated hero who was actually likable. Ground breaking live action series like Breaking Bad or The Sopranos brought the same emotionally complex anti-heroes, compelling for sure, but ultimately total thugs and shitheads. AT broke the back of that trope. And, not for nothing, the actors were really funny without having to be goofy, cartoon-y, funny sounding characters. 

Kevin Kolde’s and Warren Ellis’ Castlevania was the beginning of a new golden age of cartoons. 

Castlevania was in purgatory for a decade. No one wanted dramatic and violent cartoons for adults. No. One. But during the short lived “experimental” period at Netflix, they gave it a go. And with the stunning work that Kevin was able to bring out in Warren, animation partner Powerhouse Studios, and the actors, finally –finally!– not-a-comedy adult animation was proved to a hit with audiences across the world. Without Castlevania there would be no Arcane, no Blue Eyed Samurai. 

[fredseibert]

Most of the Fred/Alan book is available right here at FredAlan.org, but we thought you might want to read the two introductions. Here’s Alan’s. 

…

Introduction by Alan Goodman 

August 1970. I arrived at Columbia University as an experienced newspaper reporter and joined the college paper staff, getting my first assignment almost immediately. I was disillusioned just as quickly when I saw my article in print with virtually every word rewritten. That had never happened to me in two summers of working at my award-winning hometown paper. 

Maybe radio, I thought. I rang the bell at WKCR-FM, and Fred Seibert answered the door. He’s been opening doors for me ever since.

I’ve been telling that story for years. It’s shown up in print a time or two. Recently I admitted to Fred I’m not entirely certain it’s accurate. It happened more than 50 years ago. It might have been Lou Venech, who was at the station every minute he wasn’t in a classroom, keeping a pot of coffee hot next to the porcelain frog “piggy bank” where you were supposed to drop a quarter-per-cup. When I say it may not be true, I mean the first part. The second part, where opportunity after opportunity became available to me in my career and life, that was all Fred for sure.

I know this book is about our company, Fred/Alan. But my relationship with Fred is deeper and longer than that and so much of who we were as a company was rooted in who and what Fred is as a human. Like anyone, I struggle to put into words how Fred’s massive intelligence, superior instinct, personal charisma, consistent point of view, and powers of persuasion were like an iceboat through a frozen corporate sea of immobility, copycat decision-making, blaming and shaming, and general inaction. It was amazing to see in person as co-workers, rivals, clients, and supervisors fell into line as Fred led any charge.

Those traits were on display early. 

I remember a time at the radio station when we were in the midst of one of our trademark marathons celebrating a musician’s birthday. This one happened to be a three-day event honoring Charles Mingus. At some point around mid-way through the special we started playing Mingus’ music chronologically. I believe it had been scheduled. When it was Fred’s turn to take the mic, he said “I thought we’d take a break from playing Mingus’ music chronologically and for the next few hours focus on the music that made us all fall in love with him as a bass player and composer.” He programmed his own three-hour shift. I stood there thinking, any one of us could have done that. Who cares about the schedule? It was college radio. Aren’t you supposed to be a renegade? But none of us was, only Fred.

(People always said that at Fred/Alan we broke all the rules. Not true. We obeyed lots of rules. We only broke the stupid ones.)  

After school we went off into the world, Fred into radio and I into film school, then advertising at CBS Records. We were in touch all the time. For a while I would call his new station in L.A., ask for Fred Seibert, and be corrected by the receptionist. “Sei-BERG,” she would tell me as she quickly put me on hold before I could tell her I actually knew the guy.

In radio he became a protégé of Dale Pon, who in a few years Fred would hire as the advertising agency for MTV. Dale taught Fred, and later me, things like the inextricable link between media and creative, the value of numbers, the importance of making and backing up a claim, and how to build audiences. In following Dale, Fred wound up back to New York, where he was able to resume his side hustle in freelance record production. He was doing a date in the city once and called me to come sit with him in the control room. He had just had an offer from Bob Pittman, head of The Movie Channel, one of the new premium subscription channels springing up to take on HBO. Bob had gotten a recommendation from Dale for Fred to run promotion for the network (Bob and Dale knew each other from their days at NBC Radio). Fred was struggling with the decision. I looked at the musicians on the other side of the glass. One or two of them were drunk, I think there was an argument in progress, no one was sure what was happening, and it was unclear that anything worthwhile was going to get recorded that evening. “Do it,” I told him.

It wasn’t long before I was by his side producing animation for the network and within days, working with him to plan MTV. 

One of Fred’s great innovations in on-air promotion was bringing The Movie Channel subscribers to New York for two days of sightseeing, dining, and promo recording. He believed in the value of unscripted opinions from real people, a strategy we later employed at Nickelodeon with real kids. One commercial for The Movie Channel has stayed with me all these years. “There are only three things in my town that are 24 hours,” the man told our camera. “The hospital, the diner, and The Movie Channel.” I’ve never written anything that good.

“24 hours a day” was an example of a promotable promise for The Movie Channel that we also used for MTV, in an era when it was typical for us to develop a list of five or six promises for the networks we were promoting. 

Again, Fred’s idea, borne out of his radio experience where the DJs had a set of “liners” they’d use in breaks to call out the station’s attributes.

Anyone who ever worked with us knows about our affection for promises. We objected to slogans – slogans wear out and get replaced. Also, we insisted on devoting a LOT of time to promotion, which would have hastened that burn-out. With the right promises, you could execute endlessly and never run out of ways to creatively tell each story. I could probably rattle off all the promises, to this day. It’s a system that wouldn’t work in today’s era where everything is streamed, content is king, and brands are less valued. But for years I would run into generations of promo producers who learned from Fred and me, and would tell me about their promises, long after that strategy ceased being useful.

Another of our innovations was producing TV “audio first.” As MTV began building its staff and Fred started hiring producers, he found he couldn’t afford seasoned pros and none existed in TV who understood music the way we did. We had spent years doing segues and mixes and montages in college radio. Sound, we believed, mattered more than picture. If something doesn’t sound right, it’s grating as hell. If a second-long image isn’t right, what difference does it make? People are barely watching anyway. So we worked with newbies and sent them all to Clack Studios, a recording studio where I had worked in the music business, owned by the best audio engineer in New York. Audio studio time was $50 an hour. Video hours at video studios were $300 an hour, before they started adding all the extras like special effects processors, title generators, and dubs. Better to have novices crapping around at a lower rate than what the video joints charged. Like many things with Fred, there was a practical reason, but the aesthetic reason was there as well. 

Later, as we built Fred/Alan, I was often in a position where young staff members were asking me to interpret Fred for them. “I brought him an ad to see,” they’d tell me, “and he wrote a note on it, but I don’t really know what he wants.”

I would try to explain Fred to them. “Look, Fred is at heart a jazz musician,” I’d tell them. “You brought him something, and based on what you showed him he started improvising. He started riffing. I guess he wants to see something different, because if he were in love with what you showed him he would have told you. But don’t worry too much about what he told you. It was just a riff. He doesn’t necessarily want to see that exact thing, and probably won’t even remember it. He wants you to think. He wants something that works. Go away and do some more work. Don’t bring him one idea, because I can tell you he doesn’t want to see one idea. Don’t come back and tell him his idea doesn’t work either. But if you come back and show him, ‘I tried this direction, and then I tried this, and then I tried this third one, and then I thought about this, and this seemed like the best way for us to go,’ he may still not like what you have but he will totally respect your process of development and believe you did what he wants you to do.”

Other times I’d tell them, “Yeah, I can’t read his writing either.”

While we could often finish each other’s sentences, we weren’t the same person.

An important thing to say about Fred is how he is the world’s greatest champion of great ideas. A myth abounds that he only likes his own stuff. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have never seen anyone discard his own work faster in favor of someone else’s when it was clear the other person had a better idea. It was a great lesson to me. There can be great satisfaction in recognizing the contributions of others.

I think of all the things we did at Fred/Alan I am most pleased about the careers we launched. Not the work. The work was great. I still have some of it hanging on the wall because I love looking at it. But nothing matches the joy I feel knowing I pulled people out of the team to tell them, “You’re a writer. You don’t know it yet, but you’re a writer.” And now those people are writers. Or the junior art director who was supposed to accompany me to a shoot I was directing who I told at the last moment, “I’m not going. You’re directing.” It was his first of many. He just needed the push. Fred/Alan was a wonderful nest, but how thrilling when we could push someone out of the comfort and safety into the wider world.

At Fred/Alan we filled extra offices with colleagues who needed space because we wanted those brains around us. I once hired a comedy writer to write ads for us because he made me laugh. (Later he hired me to run his sitcom.) We made account executives out of people who had never been account executives before. We boosted voiceover artists into being producers. We convinced East Village artists to do advertising for MTV, getting them to take commercial work for the first time in their lives because we promised them they could do whatever they wanted – we wouldn’t change a line in their drawings. (R. Crumb, the legendary underground comic book artist, did a full-page ad for MTV that was basically about how much he hated MTV. It’s a brilliant drawing.)

In today’s corporate world HR departments write job descriptions, then go looking for people who fit those descriptions. It’s an impossible assignment, because no one will ever match your dream applicant. Our attitude was, let’s surround ourselves with smart people we like being with, and we’ll figure out what they’re good at. Our business cards never had titles on them. That wasn’t the part we cared about. Instead, we gave people shots and we were loyal. I still work with suppliers who were Fred/Alan people 40 years ago.

It was also a great place for personal experimentation, craft building, and innovating. I would never have gotten the breaks I got without Fred’s cheerleading for me. When we were younger, he hired me to write liner notes for his records. He hired me to produce animation at The Movie Channel when all I had done to earn the job was attend one class in animation at film school before dropping the class. It’s not common for advertising agency vice presidents to direct commercials, but I loved doing it and Fred was absolutely determined that I should do things that I loved, so I was often our director. When Nickelodeon was getting ready to produce its first sitcom, he told them the reason the pilot to “Hey Dude” sucked was that they needed a story editor like Alan to supervise the writing. I had never done that job before. But I wrote a new pilot and we went on to do five seasons and suddenly my career as a writer/producer was launched.

Our Fred/Alan people were wonderful. But let me say this about the work. The work was frikken unbelievable. We did more work, and more great work, than seems possible to me now. Part of that comes from the fact that Fred and I love to work. A guy who was a big-deal consultant to MTV pointed this out to me early in our agency’s life. He had sold his direct mail company to American Express and didn’t have to do anything anymore. “I’ve never seen anything like you guys before,” he told me. “You really seem to still love doing the work.”

I don’t know about Fred, but I don’t think I’ll ever retire. What would I do? Neither one of us plays golf. We don’t really have any interests. We’re not great at small talk. Travel is okay, but it’s sort of an exhausting pain in the butt. What’s more fun than working, and talking about work? 

We’ll always be checking up with each other, too, if only to take each other’s temperature on some issue or another. I can usually count on him to fill in gaps in my memory or fact base. In 50 years I’ve never heard Fred express an opinion that wasn’t apparently well-reasoned, deeply considered, poked and prodded for holes and flaws, and ultimately decided in a way that would allow him to have a ready answer if called upon to respond to a question on that subject. I say “apparently” because no one could possibly have that many opinions all sorted and filed away. He has to be making it up as he goes, but always in a manner that makes you believe you’re not the first person to ask.

I can’t imagine what my life would have been if I hadn’t met Fred Seibert more than 50 years ago and fallen under his spell of creativity, inspiration, and delight in making things. I still measure a lot of what I decide based on “what would Fred do.” 

So much of the joy I’ve experienced in life I really owe to Fred’s moral, courageous, generous, and spirited example. I love him more than I could ever say. 

Or maybe I owe it all to Lou Venech. I guess we’ll never really know.

…

Photograph of Alan Goodman & Fred Seibert by Elena Seibert 1984

[fredseibert]

Most of the Fred/Alan book is available right here at FredAlan.org, but we thought you might want to read the two introductions. Here’s Fred’s. 

…

Introduction by Fred Seibert

Fred/Alan was a hoot. Great colleagues and special, creative work. Great clients too. Until they weren’t.

Who we were –and are– was set at our first meeting at WKCR-FM, the college radio station at Columbia University in New York. We  became fast friends, learning about all sorts of music and audio production. We went on to work together in various places on various projects. We became brothers-in-law and uncles to our kids. And, we kept on working together, whether we were employed or not. We got each other jobs, and the more professional we became the deeper our affection. Friendship, understanding and some work here and there has continued for more than 50 years. 

But, the most intense professional period was the 10+ years we had at MTV and Fred/Alan.

I really wanted to be in the record business. In our generation, pop music was the thing and records were the force multiplier. Being in rock bands throughout high school and college was great, but over time I found myself wanting to help get music out there. Based in New York City, it should have been easy, but my biggest success was getting some of my friends gigs at the world class Columbia Records. Alan worked there, and try as he might, as he once said, “Fred didn’t get hired in every department at CBS Records,” Columbia’s parent company. But I found my way into commercial radio, then became one of the early employees in the new technology of the time, cable television, at the company that was to become MTV Networks.

In a short while, Alan joined me, and together we hooked up with my childhood friend, artist Frank Olinsky, and he and his partners designed the innovative MTV logo for us. Alan and I produced the video that introduced music television to the cable industry. Frank led the charge into the unique logos with which we surprised the world –we tried to use animation to keep up with the graphic revolution of rock and jazz album covers– and I put together the video promotion group. It’s fair to say that our work is what’s most remembered about MTV.

Having spent my childhood working at my parents’ Mom and Pop pharmacy, I was an anxious, and ultimately, unhappy employee. It must have been a shock to Alan that, after all the accolades and promotions our MTV work brought us, I marched into his office one day after a confrontation in the executive suite and announced that “we” were quitting. The two of us had already joked, when we were disgusted with the mediocre work of one the MTV ad agencies, that it would be fun to have a company called Fred/Alan, because none of our young friends would have a clue about America’s most popular radio comedian, Fred Allen. Maybe the oldsters who controlled budgets would hire us?

It took a year to figure out what we were going to do. We found our  office through the friendship of Buzz Potamkin, a leading MTV animation producer, in Jackie Gleason’s former “Honeymooners” production headquarters at the top of the Park Central Hotel on 7th Avenue. We’d left with thoughts of making TV shows. (It took us a few years, but we eventually got there.) MTV networks hired us right back as their major creative consultants. 

For years, I’ve said that we were the first company to codify  media “branding,” an easy enough translation from the radio business we’d both been in, along with boss Bob Pittman. But really, no one else did it, at least to the degree that we were up to. Alan and I were the first people in television to execute on the notion that a “brand” could be applied to media rather than only boxed consumer products. (And of course, that virus has spread far and wide to apply to individuals and politicians wondering about their personal “brand”.)  Along with the rest of my MTV Program Services team we’d succeeded with it beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, and when we left that led to the company suggesting that Fred/Alan  might be able to fix what was ailing Nickelodeon.

Forty years later it’s hard to imagine, but in the early ‘80s, the all-kids-all-the-time TV channel was the first of its kind, and they were failing at execution. No one watched. Nickelodeon was the lowest rated cable channel in America.

We went to work, I even moved into their offices, and with the then-unheard of “brand” strategy, we helped the Nick employees understand that they were the leaders of a club of millions of kids who were hungry for a television channel that understood them. Our clients knew a lot about kids, we knew a little bit about how to use TV to talk to them, and within six months they’d gone from worst to first in the ratings, where they stayed for 25 years, following the path we’d cleared for them. Soon, cable channels across the country wanted a piece of what we had. Longtime, lucrative gigs for Showtime, Lifetime, HBO and The Movie Channel followed. We even helped some of our friends who were leading the world revolution in jazz record reissues. It was a heady time.

And after launching the company with a short lived series for The Playboy Channel, it took us four years, and the addition of our college buddy Albie Hecht to our band of misfits, to restart our TV show ambitions, spinning off Chauncey Street Productions (the street in Bensonhurst that Jackie Gleason “lived” as Ralph Kramden in The Honeymooners. Natch!) with Albie, Alan and me producing. A few music videos led to a Gilbert Gottfried comedy special for HBO’s Cinemax. Our friends at Nickelodeon liked our idea for a “Kid’s Court” series, MTV thought our quiz show might just work (it didn’t), and HA! (the Comedy Central predecessor) gave the greenlight to a set of half hour specials featuring several up and coming performance artists. We even did our one and only network TV comedy pilot for CBS. 

Let’s be real, Alan and I had no idea what we were doing. We were both DIY before DIY was a thing. Maybe Alan got a little guidance in the advertising department at CBS Records. I’d read an advertising memoir (which, ironically, made me sure to stay away from ad agencies) and got some basic training from my mentor Dale Pon when we worked together in country music radio. But, of course, our lack of training made sure our solutions to problems were based on our personal experiences with media rather than the tried, true and cookie cutter. And, not for nothing, it caused us to hire co-workers who had no “experience” either, other than street smarts, and often, their skills. 

Over time, things started to go a little sideways. The stress of supporting  50 employees and their families melded into our scrappy clients becoming responsible corporate executives, searching for financial growth rather than creative escalation. To this day, I don’t think Alan and I ever had a disagreement. That is, until our Fred/Alan underlings would start to argue and we both felt the need to defend whomever we were responsible for. After a while, it all got to be too much and we each decided that making money couldn’t be what it was all about.

Like I said, Fred/Alan was a hoot. I can only speak for myself, but I’m sure Alan would agree, we never really looked at our colleagues and creative partners around the world as “employees,” just other friends with whom we could get into good trouble, trying to change the world. We took our work seriously, but never ourselves. We’d try anything, and if one thing didn’t work we were positive the next thing would. 

Most of all, it was the special chemistry that Alan and I have always had. A lack of creative fear was constantly fueled by the excitement of giving new talent a chance to leap up to world class. We were sure that if we came to work to have some fun, make some money, and be surrounded by people we liked, it would result in something special. And, sure enough, something extraordinary happened day after day, month after month, year after year.

The two of us share a vision that has stayed remarkably in sync for 50 years. The decade we worked side by side was exceptional. The decades since have been deep. Deep friendship, deep respect, deep love. 

Thanks buddy. You’ve made a life worthwhile. 

Photograph of Alan Goodman & Fred Seibert by Elena Seibert 1984

[fredseibert]

There’s nothing like a book.

Hopefully, this website will live on for a long time, that’s what the internet is all about, yes? But, there’s nothing like a book, so we decided to cut down a few trees and put these stories (and images) on paper. Introducing “Fred/Alan: A Decade in Media History 1983-1992, Annotated & Illustrated.”

Of course, The Fred/Alan Archive is the only place you can actually see and hear some of the video we produced. So, please keep visiting as we, hopefully, remember more and more. 

Oh yes, the book is available in hard cover and paperback here, and you can preview it below and download a PDF here. 

Fred/Alan- A Decade in Media History 1983-1992- Annotated & Illustrated [1st edition 2025] by Fred Seibert

[fredseibert]

“I Want My MTV!” 1984-1985, featuring Cindy Lauper, Billy Idol, David Bowie,  Boy George & Culture Club, Hall & Oates, Joe Elliot/Def Lepard, The Police,  Madonna, John Mellencamp, Ric Ocasek/The Cars.

I Want My MTV! 1984-1985

Interview with animation director Candy Kugel

Director/animator Candy Kugel played a critical role in the original look of MTV: Music Television. She illustrated and directed the animation for the “Top of the Hour” (colloquially known as the “MTV moonman” piece), and many others too.* Collaborating with producer Buzz Potamkin, Vincent Cafarelli and Marilyn Kraemer at Buzzco/New York, it was a special creative relationship. 

Alan Goodman and I had started Fred/Alan in April 1983, after we’d overseen the original “I Want My MTV!” campaign Dale Pon and George Lois (agency: LPG/Pon) the year before. Wouldn’t you know that after we left, MTV was doing so well that the next year, they could afford much nicer spots? 

Candy went on to supervise and direct the animation of the ‘84-’85 “I Want My MTV!” for Buzzco. The spots had a much higher production value –live action shots around the world, with hand painting and rotoscoped animation overlays– were beautiful. Because of MTV’s early successes, the company was able to fund a much larger media buy in many more markets across America.

In June 2020, I talked with Candy about the production of the campaign.

Candy Kugel: The concept of using animation over live-action developed from an earlier project we did for a radio station in San Francisco. We had experimented with a Xerox process that allowed us to print film frames onto paper, and then we manipulated them by hand. When it came time to figure out how to integrate rock stars into the MTV campaign, we thought this technique would allow us to work over the live-action footage in a way that made it unique and exciting.

Fred Seibert: How did you get involved in developing this animation style?

Candy Kugel: Kodak had just released a type of paper that made photo rotoscoping possible without needing negatives. It was a direct printing technique that seemed perfect for what we wanted to do. [MTV President]  Tom Freston, [account executive] Leslie Fenn, and I discussed what the final look would be. I didn’t have a concrete vision at the time, but I confidently told them, “It’ll look like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”

Fred Seibert: What was the process of shooting the footage and developing the animation?

Candy Kugel: We shot Hall & Oates first at Silvercup Studios in New York. Daryl Hall was standing with his legs apart, and John Oates was on an apple box to match his height. It was funny, but it worked. We chose a take, sent it to the lab for rotoscoping, and then it was entirely up to me to animate over it. I had free rein creatively, which was exciting.

Fred Seibert: How were some of the other artists handled?

Candy Kugel: Cindy Lauper was a standout. She was shot in New York and had this great energy. She asked me how her line looked in her costume, and I assured her I’d fix any issues in the drawings. The take where she was surprised by the last champagne bottle popping was genuine, so we used that. Def Leppard also filmed in New York, and Joe Elliott came up with the punching bag idea himself.

Fred Seibert: What about Billy Idol?

Candy Kugel: He was shot in New York as well. I didn’t know his music beforehand, but the moment he walked into the room, he took my breath away. He had incredible charisma—completely commanding the space. More than a musician, he had a presence like an actor.

Fred Seibert: And Culture Club?

Candy Kugel: That was shot in Europe. I didn’t know their music much beforehand either. I was given footage and had to create something from it. I had a lot to work with, so I just started experimenting.

Fred Seibert: The Police were part of this as well, right?

Candy Kugel: Yes, but that was a difficult shoot. Dale returned from filming them with really bad footage. Sting was reportedly difficult, and the material was nearly unusable. It was frustrating, but we worked with what we had.

Fred Seibert: How did the final edits come together?

Candy Kugel: The inserts and final compilation were done at PrinzCo Rack with editor Michael Biondi. Dale was always particular about what color should be behind people, even though everything started in black and white and we added color later.

Fred Seibert: Looking back, what stands out to you most about the project?

Candy Kugel: It was such a creative and experimental time. We were pushing boundaries with a style no one had seen before, blending live-action with bold, expressive animation. It gave MTV its iconic, rebellious visual identity. Dale, for all his quirks, had a vision and trusted us to execute it. The campaign became legendary because it captured the spirit of MTV’s early years—bold, unexpected, and unapologetically fresh.

Fred Seibert: Thank you for sharing these insights. It was an incredible project.

Candy Kugel: My pleasure. 

* Not to mention the work Candy did for my partner, Alan Goodman, and me later on at The Playboy Channel, Nickelodeon and Lifetime.

[fredseibert]

Over a decade ago, back when Kevin, Molly, and I started EA1, I used to give a talk at entertainment and media conferences that explained the new world of online fandoms to producers, marketers, and executives.

It had a bit of science, a lot of fan work, and bunch of storytelling to explain the social psychology and peer-oriented technologies that enabled people to connect to each another around the things that they loved.

The crowd mostly loved it -- especially the bits about what fans were doing on the site called Tumblr "without an 'e'".

But then I'd almost always lose them with the last slide. Here's my v/o from my presenter notes:

…But in the same way that you can organize and motivate peer-based fandoms around Love, you can just as easily create networks of hate. In fact, I think we’re going to see new forms of hatred, fascism, and genocide that many in this room have never seen before. They will be peer-to-peer which means there will be no center to attack or defend. They will align themselves not based on common orders but a shared bond of identity. And they will express themselves in ways that menace but hide behind veils of irony or irreverence. Back when I worked on memes, I realized that they weren’t just funny cat pictures. They were proxies for understanding how ideas flowed through networks. I’m working in marketing now because I see fandoms the same way. They give us a glimpse at how we might organize ourselves when we become mostly digital and lose our geography.  My hope is to prepare fans for that possible future, by giving them the expectation of agency in the things that they love, teaching them ways of organizing and expressing themselves through digital tools, and presenting the possibility that the skills that they build through their fandom might help empower them to shape the world to come. This thing you all do that looks like marketing could be a trojan horse. A sermon in a sugar pill that prepares people for the world to come.

I don't know if this was the way other 'official' tumblrs operated but this was always the point behind the gif tutorials, premiere watch parties, and 30 day memes for Orphan Black and Doctor Who (and maybe a bit for Killing Eve). They were design for participation. The goal was never for anyone to recognize why we were doing it (it looks like 'marketing' to me) but to give people a model and some mechanics for taking action in the world.

This was in 2013. By 2015, I stopped getting invited to do this talk. One person really got it and, b/c she was well connected, she invited me to give the talk to some folks in leadership at a national political campaign. Their response at the end was "thanks, but we've got this".

[fredseibert]

Our responsibility. 

PLEASE VOTE! United States Election Day   Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Early voting begins in some states in September 2024.

FredFilms Postcard Series 7.4 

I’m not exactly sure why I started sending out voting reminder postcards 20 years ago. And maybe it’s the Virgo in me, but I’ve tried to be non-partisan about it (”Mind your own damn business!). 

How come? 

It might have something to do with my guilt for not voting for several years when I was younger. I turned 18 the first time young’uns could vote and I was excited to pull the lever. But, not so much for a few decades. 

Luckily for me, I married an activist who made sure we brought our babies into the booth with us every year until they could cast their own votes. And, not for nothing, I’ve always been angry that one of our political parties allowed the other to highjack the United States flag as their own. I’m so happy that’s changed. 

Anyhow. It might not seem like it, but your vote actually makes a difference. Especially if you’re interested in us moving forward into the future. 

…..

From the postcard back: 

…..

From the postcard back:

A public service from FredFilms

You are one of 125 people to receive this limited edition FredFilms postcard!

www.fredfilms.com

Please VOTE! United States Election Day Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Early voting begins in some states in September 2024.

Illustration, the cover of Life Magazine, July 6, 1942

Series 7.4 [mailed out September 4, 2024]

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Michael Cuscuna, photograph by Jimmy Katz

Michael Cuscuna

Michael Cuscuna, one of my great inspirations and sometime collaborator, passed away this weekend (April 19, 2024) from cancer. Being a cancer survivor  last year myself, when someone I’ve known and worked with for over 50 years it hit particularly hard.

Blue Cuscuna: 1999 promotional sampler from Toshiba-EMI [Japan]

Michael has been the most consequential jazz record producer of the past half century, a man who had not only a passion, but the relentlessness necessary to will the entire history of the music into being. Don’t believe it? Check out the more than 2600 (!) of his credits on Discogs. Substantial and meaningful he might have been, but to me, he was a slightly older friend who was always there with a helping hand. Hopefully, I was able to hand something back on occasion. 

As I said when he answered “7 Questions” eight years ago: “I first encountered Michael as a college listener to his “freeform,” major station, radio show in New York, and was fanboy’d out when a mutual friend introduced us at [an] open rehearsal for [Carla Bley’s and Michael Mantler’s] Jazz Composer’s Orchestra at The Public Theater (MC has a photographic memory: “It was Roswell [Rudd]’s piece or Grachan [Moncur III]’s. You were darting nervously around the chairs with your uniform of the time – denim jean jacket, forgettable shirt and jeans.”) By 1972 or 73, he’d joined Atlantic Records as a producer, and since that was my career aspiration, I’d give him a call every once in awhile. He’d patiently always make time for my rambling and inane questions, and I never forgot his kindness to a drifting, unfocused, fellow traveler. 

“…patiently always make time for my rambling and inane questions…” says a lot about Michael. His raspy voice could sometimes seem brusque, but ask anyone and they will tell you that he always made time to talk. Especially about jazz. 

I desperately wanted to be a record producer and Michael was one of the first professionals I encountered. He was often amused at some of the creative decisions I made, but he was always supportive and even would sometimes ask me to make a gig when he couldn’t. When I spent a year living in LA, he invited me over to the studio while he was mining the history of Blue Note Records that would define his life for the next half century. I completely failed to understand what the great service to American culture he was about to unleash. Along with Blue Note executive Charlie Lourie, Michael’s research resulted in a series of double albums (”two-fers” in 70s speak), but little did the world know what was on Michael’s and Charlie’s minds.

The Cuscuna/Lourie Blue Note “Two-Fers” that ignited Mosaic Records

“I don’t think it’s generally understood just how imperiled the musical and visual archives of Blue Note Records were at one point, and just how heroically Michael stepped in to make sure this unparalleled American music survived for future generations. If you like jazz, you owe the man.” –Evan Haga 

(Joe Maita does a great interview about Michael’s career here.) 

Fast forward a few years. The air went out of my record producing tires, I became the first creative director of MTV, I quit MTV and along with my partner Alan Goodman started the world’s first media “branding” agency. Leafing through DownBeat one day I saw an ad that started a new relationship with Michael that would last, on one level or another, for the rest of his life: the “mail order” jazz reissue label Mosaic Records. 

Charlie Lourie & Michael Cuscuna at Mt. Fuji Jazz Festival, Japan 1987. Photograph by Gary Vercelli / CapRadio Music

Long story short, in 1982 Michael returned my check for the first two Mosaic  releases with a note asking for some help. Initially, Mosaic wasn’t the sure fire, instant success Michael and Charlie had hoped for, did I have any ideas? I did, but no time to do anything other than make suggestions, we were busy trying to get our own shop off the ground. This cycle repeated itself for another couple of years when this time when Michael called he said Mosaic was on death’s door. Fred/Alan was in better shape, so Alan and I, on our summer vacation, came up with the first Mosaic “brochure,” convinced the guys we knew what we were doing (I’d read a few paragraphs in a direct mail book in a bookstore) and, with nothing to lose, Charlie and Michael took the plunge with us. Success! 42 years later, the former Fred/Alan and Frederator CFO at the helm, Alan and I always answer any call from Mosaic. 

There aren’t many people in the world like Michael Cuscuna. The world’s culture will miss him. I will miss him. Most of all, of course, his wife and children will miss him. 

[fredseibert]

Oblivion Records book cover concept as of April 2024, all elements subject to change.

The state of not forgetting.

It would be a severe understatement to say that Oblivion Records was a successful business. After all, we went belly up within four years of our first release. I’m not implying anything about the quality of our recordings, which, IMHO, are pretty damn good. But seriously, never was a company so aptly named. 

oblivion  [uh-bliv-ee-uhn]

noun    1. the state of being completely forgotten or unknown    2. state of forgetting

Digital technology for music distribution has kept Oblivion alive in the 21st century. There’s no way we could continue to make most of our music recordings available otherwise. The alternative would’ve been a shame, so we’ve kept up with the easiest ways to share it with listeners around the world.

But, as we get older it occurred to us that our children were too young, or not even born yet, when we had the company in the early 1970s, the era in which all our music was recorded. So, for their sake, we’ve started writing down the behind the scenes of actually getting things done at Oblivion.

Hopefully, sometime in 2024, we’ll be publishing “Never Was a Company So Aptly Named: The Blues + Jazz of Oblivion Records 1972-1975” (at least, that’s the working title; everything’s subject to change. Record jackets, LP labels, posters and illustrations of the (not much) ephemera we can get our hands on will be included. But, it’s the stories behind the records that will take up most of the 250+ pages.

Will it all be true? Hopefully, but memories fade, spindle and mutilate, so we’ll see.

[fredseibert]

Behold, the king of online cartoons

Ex-Hanna-Barbera whiz Fred Seibert blazing a trail with YouTube network

A couple of times over the years, then-USA Today’s entertainment and tech reporter (and photographer) Jefferson Graham was nice enough to feature me in an article about the cartoons I was producing. First time was in the late 90s with “Oh Yeah! Cartoons,” but in 2015, with streaming video finally reaching the mainstream press (Channel Frederator actually started in 2005) and Graham’s animator son joining our network, he revisited.

Thanks to animator Michael Hilliger, who sent over his copy of the article in 2024.

By Jefferson Graham USA Today July 17, 2015

LOS ANGELES — Fred Seibert wants you to have his card.

And his phone number. He even won’t mind if we print his fred@frederator.com e-mail address right here in USA TODAY.

Seibert, 63 is the online toon king, with 400 million views monthly to his Channel Frederator network on YouTube, but he’s never sure where his next hit will come from.

So he’s always out there looking, at schools, industry gatherings, book signings. You name it.

Next weekend, he’ll be at the Vidcon convention near Los Angeles, a gathering of folks who make their living off YouTube, which is where most folks see his online `toons.

“I have no ideas,” he says. “But I recognize talent.”

That’s for sure. Seibert, then president of Hanna-Barbera’s cartoon studios in the 1990s, is credited with discovering Seth MacFarlane, the creator of the Family Guy, fresh from college, when he hired him to work on Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

For Seibert’s “What a Cartoon!” series for the Cartoon Network, Seibert hit ratings gold, signing up the creators who churned out hits like “The Powerpuff Girls,” “Dexter’s Laboratory” and “Johnny Bravo.” Their series debuted as shorts for first for Seibert’s series.

He still serves as executive producer of “The Fairly OddParents,” a TV series he began producing in 1998 when it debuted on his “Oh Yeah, Cartoons,” series. It’s been running ever since on Nickelodeon.

Seibert’s biggest audiences, however, have come from online, to the tune of some 1.9 billion views for ‘toons like the Bee and PuppyCat and Bravest Warriors.

We had Seibert as a guest on our #TalkingTech podcast in June. At the time, he was averaging 300 million monthly viewers to the Channel Frederator network. Now he’s already up to 400 million monthly viewers, and predicts he’ll top 700 million by year’s end, and 1 billion by 2016.

The reason for the massive growth is that unlike before, when animation was targeted just to young kids, either for Saturday morning TV, and kid-based cartoon TV channels, anyone of all ages can view `toons online.

Seibert’s Cartoon Hangover, a Frederator section where he shows the best of his `toons, bills itself as the channel for “cartoons that are too weird, wild, and crazy for television.”

“Bee and PuppyCat,” about a young woman with a hybrid dog-cat, is written by Natasha Allegri, a woman in her 20s, about a character in her 20s, and thus, obviously not targeted to the traditional animation crowd.

“No matter what your interest online — whether it be anime, or science fiction or comedy cartoons, there is a place for you,” Seibert says. “TV has a tough time supporting the sub-genres. Online is all about sub-genre.”

Channel Frederator is what’s known as a multi-channel network. Cartoons run on YouTube, but his network promotes them, sells ads and distributes the proceeds to some 2,000 of his video makers.

Through Frederator, the channel makers learn about which color to make their thumbnails to find larger YouTube audiences (he recommends yellow) and which keywords to use in the descriptions (“funny” always works, he says.)

“We give them the tools to grow their performance,” he says.

Dominic Panganiban, a 24-year-old animator from Toronto, joined the Frederator network in November, and has seen his subscriber base grow ten times since.

He had been working with Full Screen, another multi-channel network that works with YouTube creators to help them monetize their videos and attract larger audiences.

“Frederator was a better fit, because they cater more towards animation channels,” Panganiban says. Because Frederator attracts folks who enjoy cartoons, “I have more potential here.”

By being part of the Frederator network, Australian animator Sam Green says he’s learned about how to better promote his cartoons, and gotten access to a database of free music and sound effects to use in his cartoons.

He too has seen a spike in traffic.

Being with Seibert "helped me move from my mother’s garage to affording my own apartment in the big city,“ he says.

How did the traffic for both creators go up so dramatically?

Seibert promoted the cartoons to his audience. With 2,000 cartoon makers, that’s a lot to choose from. He says he’ll plug as many of them as "show an interest” to growing their audience. He looks for people who post new work regularly, stay in touch, and ask “what we can do to help them more.”

And despite the massive online audience, Seibert isn’t making money yet, and doesn’t think he will for another three years. 

“Our cartoons are 3-4 minutes long, and the average American watches 6 hours of TV a day,” he says. “We have a long way to go to even that out.”

Photography by Jefferson Graham, July 2015

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“There’s no reason to be afraid…“

 FredFilms Postcard Series 10.2 

One of the truly wonderful, and unusual things about “Adventure Time” –and boy, are there many, many wonderful and unusual things in “Adventure Time”– is that, unlike any other cartoon show I can think of, there’s dialog that one could never image happening in any other cartoon show.

…..

From the postcard back:

Congratulations! You are one of 125 people to receive this limited edition FredFilms postcard!

www.fredfilms.com

Original, always Your next favorite cartoon Creators first

FredFilms Quotations “There’s no reason to be afraid of things that are beautiful.”

From the “Adventure Time” episode “To Cut a Woman’s Hair” Story by Pendleton Ward, Steve Little, Patrick McHale, Merriwether Williams, Thurop Van Orman Written by Kent Osborne & Somvilay Xayaphone

Series 10.2 [mailed out March 26, 2024]

[fredseibert]

Fred ❤️ Keith Haring

FredFilms Postcards Series 4.10

I know, I know, I just said I was suspending the FredFilms Great Artist postcard series. It just caused too many misunderstandings (yes, we still making cartoon films, no, we’re not making documentaries).

But, then I visited the Los Angeles resurrection of the amazing 1987 Luna Luna Art Carnival (read the incredible background at the links; thank you Drake!) and one of its great stars, Keith Haring.

The Keith Haring Merry-Go-Round @Luna Luna, Los Angeles

A lot of art critics seem to feel Keith is, at a minimum, a lightweight. Whatever. I’m no art critic, so I have to say I think his work and his approach to art is fantastic. I love his stuff. 

So, I’m temporarily changing my mind, just for this card. I’d already printed a bunch of the Great Artist cards, Keith’s was one of them. Misunderstandings notwithstanding, it’s going in the mail tomorrow.  Don’t be confused. Be inspired.

…..

From the postcard back:

Congratulations! You are one of 125 people to receive this limited edition FredFilms postcard!

www.fredfilms.com

FredFilms Great Artist Series

Keith Haring

Photographer unknown

Series 4.10 [mailed out March 9, 2024]

[fredseibert]

Fred ❤️ Keith Haring

FredFilms Postcard Series 4.10

I know, I know, I just told you I’m suspending the FredFilms Great Artist Series of postcards because of the misunderstandings it projects (yes, we’re still making cartoon films, no, we’re not making documentaries). What I hadn’t mentioned is that I’d already printed a bunch. (I have no idea what to do with them.)

But then, I visited an amazing exhibit, the Los Angeles resurrection of the 1987  Luna Luna Traveling Art Carnival (read the amazing story at the links; thank you Drake), and one of its great stars, Keith Haring. 

A lot of snooty art critics think Keith is, at minimum, a lightweight. Too bad, I’m not an art critic. I think his work is awesome.

So, the more I’m reading about a new biography (I’m reading it now), the more attention Keith is getting 34 years after his tragic, early death at 31 years old, the more I’m reflecting on the stuff of his I bought at the Pop Shop in the 80s, the more I needed to change my mind, just this once. I’m honoring Keith Haring, a FredFilms Great Artist.

.....

From the postcard back:

Congratulations! You are one of 125 people to receive this limited edition FredFilms postcard!

www.fredfilms.com

FredFilms Great Artist Series

Keith Haring

Photographer unknown

Series 4.10 [mailed out March 9, 2024]

[fredseibert]

We got such a good reaction to last week’s “The Summoning” postcard teasing a graphic novel series that I thought it was a good bet you hadn’t read the interview with creator Elyse Castro that was done in 2017 by the Frederator development group.

frederator-studios:

Frederator Studios’ Cooper Nelson checked in with Elyse Castro, creator of “The Summoning,” the newly released GO! Cartoons short on Cartoon Hangover, to ask a few burning questions. Let’s see if her answers are equally on fire.

Elyse Castro created “The Summoning,” about Claire, a witch, and her cat Edgar, on a quest for a missing spell ingredient. When I asked her our usual opening question—“Where did you study animation?”—Elyse just chuckled.

“Can’t answer that one,” she explained, “I didn’t!”

Rebellious against the ‘usual,’ Castro, of Brisbane, Australia, is a prolific creative, with experience ranging from playwriting to comics to taxidermy—she recently gave blacksmithing a go. Below, she doles out the deets on “The Summoning,” and leads us down her windy path to cartoon-creating.

So what did you study in school?

I went to uni for theater and visual art, but halfway through got really into the culture of tattooing, and became a tattoo apprentice. My Catholic parents were horrified. I was a tattoo artist for several years, then cooled off it—partly because of a hurt wrist, partly because I was tired of people’s shit tattoo ideas.

I can imagine. So then what’d you get up to?

I was doing freelance comics, some fine art, but also studied to become a drama teacher. I was frustrated about the neglect of arts and theater education in Australia, and decided to quit harping about the problems and lend a hand to the solutions.

Do you enjoy teaching?

I love connecting with the kids. And it’s creative—I teach at an all boys school, so I often write us alternative plays to fit them better, like our own version of “Robin Hood”. It’s a lot of laughs—I love making people laugh.

Is that why you wanna make cartoons?

Oh yeah – it’s always been a big motivation for me. My biggest goal in life all through growing up, and even now, is to make my sister laugh. It isn’t too hard, she’s thinks I’m a riot. She ended up becoming a research scientist, while I’m an adult entertained by Yo Gabba Gabba.

I respect that. So then what inspired “The Summoning”?

Certainly my maniac cats [see Winston below]. And actually, a lot of experiences with my sister. Voices we’d use, stupid things we’d do. And some gross stuff. Like, the whole bit with the dandruff in “The Summoning” was based on a time that I picked a big flake of the stuff off her head. I remember it now, a nice, sunny day…

Aha, gross! Gotcha. What mattered to you while developing your own short?

I thought about what I wanted to see in a cartoon—I’m drawn to the macabre, odd stuff, like my taxidermy. I’m very crafty, always making things, which lends itself to a witch character. And tone-wise, I wanted to keep it real, even have nuggets of education. Like in “The Summoning,” I tucked in a great factoid about poo consumption in the animal kingdom.

Sounds about as educational as a Frederator show gets!

I still can’t believe I have a project with Frederator. It was my childhood dream to make a cartoon, and I’m a huge fan of Pendleton Ward and Natasha Allegri. I even got to work with Natasha, who directed “The Summoning”! I was fangirling, it was so hard to act cool.

What’re your favorite cartoons?

Definitely Daria, Ren and Stimpy, South Park, and Adventure Time.

So about the witchcraft stuff – dabble in witchcraft yourself?

Not really, but I’m very interested in paganism and witchcraft. I study it, love the history behind it. My friends and I mess around with tarot cards sometimes, but I haven’t gone farther than that… yet.

– Cooper

Watch Elyse’s “The Summoning” on Cartoon Hangover!

For the 1 year anniversary of “The Summoning” and Go! Cartoons, bumping @elysecastro‘s interview non-US fans link here!

(this was also my first interview! We’re at ~50 a year later, with video and probs audio ones too on the way. Anthology post forthcoming! ?)

– stillcooper

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Coming in 2025! A new graphic novel series!

FredFilms Postcard Series 3.9

One of my favorite shorts produced at Frederator for GO! Cartoons was Elyse Castro’s The Summoning (developed by the indefatigable Eric Homan). I loved it so much that when I left the company I asked Elyse to come along to FredFilms so we could redevelop it as a series. Lucky for us, she said yes!

Given the f-up’d state of the kids marketplace, while we continued work on the series I thought we ought to take advantage of Casey Gonzalez’s –FredFilms’ VP development– long time background as a graphic novel editor. Elyse agreed again, and being the hardest working woman in show business (hat tip to JB and Butch Hartman) and agreeable, had it worked it within days and we proceeded to engage super-graphic-novel-agent Judy Hansen to snag us a deal. Which, of course, she did in a quick minute.

I thought about what I wanted to see in a cartoon—I’m drawn to the macabre, odd stuff, like my taxidermy. I’m very crafty, always making things, which lends itself to a witch character. And tone-wise, I wanted to keep it real, even have nuggets of education. Like in The Summoning, I tucked in a great factoid about poo consumption in the animal kingdom.

–Elyse Castro interview 2017

This week’s FredFilms postcard isn’t announcing any particulars (that wouldn’t be smart, yes?) but to give The Summoning super fans some optimism in what has been a disheartening era in wonderful work.

…..

From the postcard back:

You are one of 125 people to receive this limited edition FredFilms postcard!

www.fredfilms.com

Coming in 2025, A graphic novel series from Elyse Castro, creator of The Summoning

Series 3.9 [mailed out February 26, 2024]

[fredseibert]

Joe Lee Wilson/Ladies Fort flyer, October 1976, courtesy of Jim Eigo, Jazz Promo Services

How Oblivion came to release Joe Lee Wilson’s Livin’ High Off Nickels & Dimes 

Jazz entered my life as a transition from the “rock” evolution led by The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and James Brown, and into the avant-garde, “new music” of Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor. But in the summer of 1972, when the smoke signals started coming out of WKCR-FM about an amazing live shot of the jazz vocalist Joe Lee Wilson, I wasn’t yet able to make the backwards leap to his mainstream sounds. That would take me a little while.

Starting in 1970, I was almost the exclusive engineer for live broadcasts at Columbia University’s student run radio station. I hadn’t any particular knowledge or talent –I was literally making things up as the musicians came by– but because I eagerly volunteered and no one else seemed to have any interest. My background as an organist in amateur rock bands had proved to me that I wasn’t motivated to become a professional, but the infection of recordings had taken hold including an overriding  interest in figuring out how to accomplish them. And when one of my earliest airshots was released as an actual vinyl album by German band leader Gunter Hampel I was completely hooked. Sessions for a few dozens of performances followed. 

Of course, I wasn’t actually the only one doing the recordings. But since I wasn’t working at the station in the summer of ‘72, when the New York Musicians’ Jazz Festival* started showing up to promote their concerts, other folk stepped up.

Don Zimmerman was part of the technical team that kept the radio station functional and on the air. It didn’t occur to me that he had any music chops. When I was told that he’d engineered the Joe Lee session, and that it sounded great, I suppose I was more than a little indignant. and to be honest, a lot jealous. After all, I had been the one getting all the accolades for the live shots over the past couple of years.

My revenge? I steadfastly avoided listening to the Zim recorded, Joe Lee tapes.

FOO (friend of Oblivion), my great friend and roommate, Nick Moy, had no such reservations. I knew him as a devout lover of classical music, and was surprised that he was also a dedicated jazz listener with much wider appreciations than me. He had a particular interest in jazz vocalists and had attended the original session. When we started Oblivion Records, he worked me hard to convince us to consider the session for a vinyl release.

Tom, Dick and I agreed that Oblivion’s mission was to expose emerging artists to wider recognition. Once I got over myself and listened to the extraordinary voice on that tape from July 1972, I realized we had the makings of a special album.

…..

*The famous Newport Jazz Festival had been banned from it’s Rhode Island home after raucous, young rock fans rioted. Relocated the next summer to New York, then the jazz center of the universe, city based musicians, world class but not necessarily household names, felt left out. They decided to put on an alternative festival as a protest.

Click here for more stories about “Livin’ High Off Nickels & Dimes”

[fredseibert]

Frederator Networks interns, autumn 2015, left to right: Fred, Sam Lee (University of Michigan), Josette Roberts (SVA), Jenny Brent (SUNY Purchase), Judy Tam (SVA), Lisa Franklin (Brown), Liz Chun (RISD), Danielle Ceneta (Syracuse), Peter Carlson (Ringling) Photo by Kirsten Wagstaff

Why I like interns. 

This post is from 2015 when I was running Frederator Networks, a much larger company than FredFilms. But most of the sentiments (we now pay interns, when we have them, which is NOT NOW) continue to be true.

And, I have to say, the part I find most unlikely but most true is… interns are our mentors. Seriously.

There’s been a lot of squabbling in the press this year about interns, especially in the media and technology businesses. And since I’ve had rookie programs in place for several decades, it seemed like a good time to weigh in.

Science? Or The Beatles?

For me, it’s personal. Back in the day (my day, that is), there were no organized apprenticeship programs that I knew of to prepare me for the work life I was seeking. But a lot of helpful people gave me guidance, and I want to pay it forward.

I grew up in a science family, knowing I’d be a scientist too. And then The Beatles came to America, and like a lot of other kids, my world got turned upside down. Eventually, I became determined to be in the recording business as a record producer. The problem was I knew no one who could help. And so I started to make my own way, in what to me was an underground, secret society. As full time, liberal arts college student it the 70s, there was no NYU Clive Davis Institute, Full Sail University. No Mix Magazine, noTape Op. I was totally on my own. I found one class taught by an RCA recording engineer and producer, and one highly technical publication. I stumbled into private recording sessions, asked anyone who knew anything, bullied my way into record companies.

There were no internships. I hadn’t even heard the term.

There were dozens of nice people who helped me and taught me things along the way. I worked in hundreds of circumstances for free, making mistakes and successes along the way, basically creating my own training path. I figured things out, started a record company, got a gig here and there. I rubbed shoulders with enough world class experts to figure out I had staked out the wrong direction for myself, and by the time I was 30, found myself in the television business. It all eventually worked out for me.

But, if there had been someplace for me to start fathoming what was going on, somewhere where I could smell what the scene was, I could have learned things a lot faster, and maybe cordoned off my path into the right direction a little sooner.

Interns aren’t easy.

For years it was hard for us to attract interns. Most of my companies have been startups, or below the radar service organizations, not famous ones at that. We really had to search, reaching out to local colleges and putting our best foot forward, hoping to attract minimally interested candidates. (Things have changed dramatically, ever since we produced Adventure Time and started Cartoon Hangover. Now we have to cut things off when we get 250 applications per semester, for less than 10 spots). Occasionally, an eager high school student would show up and ask to stick around, and despite the anxieties of our lawyers and insurance carriers, we worked things out.

I couldn’t tell you the exact criteria we’ve used to select contenders. But, I must say, our highly subjective process has resulted in some stellar colleagues and often, friends.

And intern programs aren’t easy to administer. We’re not heavily staffed, so whomever is responsible for the program is usually fitting it into an already over packed work day. And frankly, most of the students come into our place eager, but really rough around the edges. Many have no real work ethic, daily discipline, or much of an ability to actually interact with the adults in the workplace. I mean, they’re kids, after all.

On balance though, from my limited perspective, while internships sometimes put a burden on our small staff, our company has come out all the richer. Especially these days, as the way young people set the agenda for technology use and innovation, having the innocent perspective of new faces streaming in and out of our offices makes us sharper, smarter, and fresher.

And based on the long term relationship we have with many of our past candidates, the benefit has definitely been in both directions.

Interns are our mentors.

“No one hires interns,” says a disgruntled one in a recent New York Times story in the aftermath of some of the unpaid intern lawsuits.

I’m of two minds about the discontent. On the one hand, it’s clear that many companies are using interns as unpaid labor. Totally unjust. And, there’s a good argument that unpaid internships often favor well off students. But, it’s also true that internship programs can cost companies in real opportunity cost and productivity losses, as time spent away from daily workflow. Definitely, interns can be a double edged sword.

At my company, we don’t pay interns as a matter of policy. [The policy changed at Frederator, and now at FredFilms, we will pay interns.] As a start up we’re thinly resourced as it is, and any extra dollars are needed to keep the wheels on the bus. But, more importantly to me, I want people who actually want to be at Frederator, not someone who just wanted something cool to do for a while. Not for nothing, it’s the same criteria we use for employees. If someone comes into our offices with no clue about who we are, what we do, and what we stand for, we show them the door. We’re not a place for people who work to live, we live to work.

All that being said, we work super hard to be fair. If there’s an intern job in the house that we would pay a freelancer to do, the intern gets paid. We also limit their time at the office to two or three days a week. That gives a chance for more people to get exposure, and it encourages them to be out in the world rather than cooped up with us old working folk.

At the end of the day, some interns are good, and some are really bad. And, it’s true, not all good interns get hired. However, I can say with great assurance that my companies hired interns 30 years ago, and we hired interns 30 days ago. I think it’s safe to say that fully 25% of our current, full time team started in our internship programs.

And honestly, the former interns are some of my very favorite colleagues.

The interns in my shops remind me of why I wanted to get working the minute I was done with schooling (actually, before I finished, but that’s another essay). They’re intelligent, they’re fun, they know things I’ll never know. Sure, I can give them some benefits too, but the thing they don’t realize is that while we’re mentoring them, they’re actually mentoring us.

Fair trade, in my book. I really like interns.