fredseibertdotcom

[fredseibertdotcom]

Yes, there’s something about a book.

The Art of MTV - The MTV: Music Television Logo August 1, 1981-February 8, 2010 by Fred Seibert

I've often posted here about the MTV logo, and people keep asking me about it, even all these decades later. At least, people ask about the OG logo that lasted until 2010. It’s true that you can see hundreds of example on the internet, but... there’s just something about a book. 

Here's the introduction I wrote for this book of many of my favorite M’s, I think it's adds some (more!) color to the story. 

...

The ‘M’ was the star

In a world about to explode with TV channels and noise, it had to be.

By Fred Seibert 

My job at MTV: Music Television was to make the ‘M’ the star. The question is, why?

My boss didn’t tell me to do it. My actual job title was Vice President, Program Services. Essentially, I was the original Creative Director and a co-founder. My tasks seemed straightforward: get a logo made, establish the verbal and written vocabulary, and make on-air promotional spots. 

Check. Check. Check.

So why did I reject nearly 500 preliminary logo sketches from Manhattan Design? Why did I pick the one you all remember? Why was it so damn important?

Let’s rewind. In 1981, the year we launched, the average American home had just two television channels. Really. In major markets like Los 

Angeles or New York, you might get seven primary VHS channels: three national networks and four independents. Most people ignored UHF. In some rural areas or densely packed cities, they had one channel, with reception that was snowy at best. On average, two channels.

But with satellite-distributed cable TV coming fast, the prediction was there would be 100 channels by 1984. One hundred!? Unthinkable. (No one could imagine the 50 million+ YouTube channels we have today.)

In that coming flood of video programming  MTV: Music Television wouldn’t even get sampled unless we stood out.

I felt we needed a dominant visual signpost to guide viewers to us. The musicians were important, but they’d come and go. Duran Duran and Pat Benatar might be huge now, but they’d be replaced by Michael Jackson, Nirvana, or the Backstreet Boys.

MTV had to be the constant. The channel itself had to outlast the artists.

To me, it was like the transformation in the ’60s when album covers went from utilitarian to statement pieces. Music alone wasn’t enough—the design, photography, and illustration had to stop you in your tracks. Bob Pittman, my boss, put it perfectly:

“Fred, people don’t buy music. They buy packages.”

The Beatles may have lit the match, but the fire spread fast, and I wanted MTV to burn just as brightly.

What to do?

After hundreds of failed attempts, Manhattan Design walked in with that now-iconic giant ‘M’ with a graffiti-inspired ‘TV’ scrawled over it.

Yes! 

My promo mentor Dale Pon had a mantra: “Designs need to dominate the space.”

The ‘M’ did just that—it filled every inch of those old 4x3 TV screens like it owned the room.

From there, my creative partner Alan Goodman and I reached out to young, independent animators around the world. They’d grown up not just with rock’n’roll, but with the album art that gave the music its emotional packaging. We gave them a simple rule: Make sure the ‘M’ is center of attention.

They delivered. Did they ever.

MTV: Music Television bombarded the world with A Flock of Seagulls, The Human League, Michael Jackson, Joan Jett, David Bowie, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Aerosmith, Radiohead, Counting Crows, Sheryl Crow, NSYNC, Britney Spears, Eminem, Linkin Park, Blink-182, Mandy Moore...

Many of those artists are now forgotten, dismissed, or listened to only through the fog of nostalgia. And once MTV dropped “Music Television” for "Jersey Shore," "Ridiculousness," and a gutted version of the logo, something got lost. Visit the MTV Store today—the only T-shirts that sell carry the classic logos designed by Pat Gorman, Frank Olinsky, and Patti Rogoff of Manhattan Design.

The artists came and went.

But MTV: Music Television? 

MTV hit the world with more glorious M’s than you could shake a stick at.

[fredseibertdotcom]

Thanks Jamie! 

It was just another casual day on the radio, Jamie Katz was the host of (I think) the daily “Jazz Alternatives,” and doing what he did best. Playing mainstream jazz that he loved. 

Our college radio station was full of full of themselves hipsters. Not everyone, of course, but a bunch of us loudmouths had taken what had then been a bit of a backwater in a station that prided itself on its classical and folk music programming (and tip-toeing into the rock that most college students listened to in their dorm rooms), and rammed jazz to the forefront. The loudest of the loudmouths, like me, thought that meant focusing on the “energy” players that had emerged after John Coltrane’s untimely death. Personally, I had no idea what I was talking about, I was a newbie who’d leaped directly from Jimi Hendrix and Cream into The Tony Williams Lifetime, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, skipping decades of the music that America, and the world, had fallen in love with.  Not Jamie. Or Phil Schaap or Sharif Abdus-Salaam. They had a deep well of reverence and enjoyment of everyone. Jamie and Sharif keep up with players of all stripes. Phil did too for his entire life. 

Anyhow... this one day I was wandering around the station, as I did everyday, all day –the reason I never graduated– and coming through the live feed speaker was a recording that just stopped me in my tracks. Miles Davis’ “Milestones.” It’s a great tune, a wonderful performance, and it’s got that magical ‘something’ that makes me put it up in my home on the regular. When it was finished Jamie said something really smart and evocative, something that made me stop and listen to him as much as the music. Don’t ask me what he said, but suffice it to say that I listened to him every chance I got. Still do, on the rare occasion that we speak. His warmth, his depth of feeling, his... generosity of spirit shines  through with every word he spoke. (It does in his writing too, Jamie went on to become a magazine writer and editor.) 

Because of those six minutes of music and the minutes afterwards that Jamie spoke, I never dismissed those decades of music that I’d passed up. I’m still listening, still learning. Most of all, I learned to be more open in my thinking, a hard lesson that still hard, but at least it’s one I try to never forget. Thanks to Jamie Katz. Can’t say that about too many people. 

Thanks Jamie!

Photograph by Joanna Katz

[fredseibertdotcom]

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

[fredseibertdotcom]

“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.

[fredseibertdotcom]

Next New Networks, Part 4

I’m going to try, in as few posts as possible (well, it keeps getting longer), to create a coherent timeline of the short, eventful life of Next New Networks, an early, consequential moment in streaming video history.

From Part 1: Emil Rensing and I, with a huge assist from future Tumblr creator David Karp, stumbled into the brave new world of online video without much of a plan.

From Part 2: Our friend –my former partner at Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, and our future Next New Networks partner– Jed Simmons introduced us to Spark Capital in Boston, who wanted to partner and fund Next New.

From Part 3: Our path to our initial venture capital funding. Part 3.2: A NNN  interview with graphic design historian Steven Heller. 

Part 4: Funded in 2007 

Next New Networks was initially funded by Emil Rensing and me when we successfully, if surprisingly, dropped Channel Frederator and VOD Cars. Thanks to Jed Simmons, we successfully got a “A round” funding from various VC’s including Spark Capital, Benchmark Europe and Saban Capital. Here are a few of the press reactions to the company in its initial months. I’m not sure why TechCrunch was so late to the game. Om Malik was –not surprisingly– really annoying with his analysis, and hipper-than-thou Caroline McCarthy is an early cynic, but her childhood love of Nickelodeon finally tipped her over to our side. Sigh. 

...

Techcrunch.com

Next New Networks Building Micro Television Networks

May 20, 2007

Next New Networks is an online media company with big plans for “micro television networks”.

The New York based company launched in January with $8 million in funding from Spark Capital.

The team behind the service is impressive. There are five founders of the company, Herb Scannell, Fred Seibert, Jed Simmons, Tim Shey and Emil Rensing. CEO Scannell is the former President of Nickelodeon Networks and Vice-Chairman of Viacom’s MTV. Seibert was the original creative director of MTV and a former president of Hanna-Barbera, Simmons a former senior executive at Excite and Turner Broadcasting. Shey cofounded and ran interactive agency Proteus and more recently produced Amanda Across America, Amanda Congdon’s post Rocketboom video blogging project. Rensing was an engineer at AOL before co-founding Frederator Studios.

Next New Networks aims to build internet based “micro television networks” for targeted niche communities. The concept brings together elements of traditional TV networks with Internet functionality that invites viewers to contribute, share and distribute content.

Next New Network’s PR spokesperson Brooke Hammerling shared the following description of a micro-network as the company sees it:

“[micro-networks are] a brand that lives on the internet and creates a relationship with its audience wherever it goes. In practical terms, every network of [Next New Networks] will have one or more shows, 3-11 minutes of programming, on a weekly or daily basis, a website, and a feed that can be subscribed to in places like iTunes or My Yahoo. Many may also have a Channel or homepage on sites like YouTube. You can go to any of those places and get every episode of the networks’ shows when and how you want them”.

Think Weblogs Inc meets video blogging with an everywhere distribution model.

Next New Networks has already launched 9 micro-networks with a plan to expand that number to 30:

Indy Mogul: a the network dedicated to DIY filmmakers and film lovers.

Channel Frederator: billed as the world’s original cartoon podcast, it serves the funniest cartoons sent in by viewers each week.

Fast Lane Daily: a car news network providing 5 minutes of fresh car news every day.

Pulp Secret: “the world’s first network dedicated to comic book news and culture”. Includes comic book news, interviews and reviews.

ThreadBanger: targeted at people who make their own clothes and accessories. Includes DIY tips and how-to guides.

Veracifier: “Alternative channel” with “original ideas”, reporting and commentary on news of the day.

VOD Cars: promoted as the “#1 Broadband Car Network”. Features clips of driving, racing, showing, drifting, posing and more from viewers. One for rev-heads.

The company recently signed a distribution deal that will see 7 of the 9 channels appearing on Veoh.com.

The content is niche targeted so it’s not going to appeal to everyone. However with $8million in funding and a wealth of industry experience, Next New Networks will be a company to watch in this space.

...

Is there anything new about Next New Networks?

Another YouTube killer. Yawn or no yawn?

Caroline McCarthy Jan. 4, 2007 12:56 p.m. PT  Paid Content  

Meet the latest contender to plunge into the deep end of the YouTube-killer pool. Say it five times fast: Next New Networks. The bloggers are all talking about this recently-announced Web video endeavor today, and most of them are pretty cynical--especially since Next New Networks is not the brainchild of some ambitious entrepreneurs, but rather a bevy of big-media veterans, led by former Nickelodeon president and MTV Networks vice chairman Herb Scannell. After all, when the broadcast TV networks announced a plan to team up, Captain Planet-style, on a YouTube rival, bloggers were skeptical. (They're more optimistic about shadowy anti-YouTubes when they're started by successful Web personalities, like the Skype founders' Venice Project.)

Web 2.0 and venture blogs seem to be in agreement on this one, rolling their eyes at the prospect of yet another video site clogging the Web. Om Malik of GigaOM, classified Next New as "a bunch of old media guys, getting into this new video game, cash[ing] in on the user-generated buzz that comes with a $1.65 billion buyout." And, indeed, it might just be too late to jump into the game as a new video-sharing site, even with the $8 million in funding that Next New has obtained from Spark Capital.

But on the other hand, we've said it before here that a Web video site needs an innovative feature or business model in order to survive in this saturated market, and Next New Networks just might have that. Yesterday, I wrote about CozmoTV, a video search site that addresses the fact that trying to find stuff you like on YouTube can be a huge mess. And Next New does look like it's trying to tackle that same problem: instead of trying to start one massive video site, it plans to divide its user-generated content among separate niche video sites, each one supported by ads. Like CozmoTV's "channel" feature, this could appeal to users who want a quick and easy route to the videos they want to see. And if something like this is successful, it'll be a strong indicator that so-called "old media" companies really do have what it takes to make it in a YouTubed world.

Besides, we should never underestimate anything that's ever had anything to do with Nickelodeon. Any TV network that can turn a cartoon about a talking sponge into a wild mainstream success must have some good brains at its helm.

[fredseibertdotcom]

We was chocolate before chocolate was cool. 

It was a great idea, before its time. Oh, and I didn’t exactly know what I was doing. 

The late 1990s and early 2000s saw me straying into some areas that were a result of my arrogance and ignorance. I haven’t written yet about my short, disastrous foray into comic book publishing, but it led into a fun, but equally calamitous venture. Chocolate bars. 

Long story, short, in 1997 I put together a few people to invest to save storied, but troubled underground comix publisher Kitchen Sink Press, founded in Princeton, Wisconsin, but relocated in Northampton, Massachusetts. In addition to comics, the company put out all sorts of artist tangential products like trading cards, cloisonne pins, and my favorite and their best selling product, R. Crumb Devil Girl Choco(late) Bars.  When it was clear that KSP was going to continue being a black hole of financial losses it shut down. Clearly, I had no idea how to usefully help the company, and my living in Los Angeles with the company 2,920 miles away didn’t help one bit. 

I’d lost a lot of money, including my wife’s savings and my kid’s college fund, and I really wanted to earn it back for my family’s sake. Fast forward, I did, but certainly not in the KSP spin off I conceived. 

For reasons best sorted out with a therapist, I love everyday objects that have cool images printed on them. Skateboards, T-shirts, posters, you get the idea. So the fact that chocolate bars are obsessions of a lot of people, no matter their age, gender, location, and the R.Crumb and Fabulous Freak Brothers bars being a hit that I felt KSP had ignored in their plight, I got the bright idea of partnering with a Massachusetts based KSP consultant to launch a company named True Confections, solely in the business of boxes of chocolate bars with cool images printed on them.  Can’t go wrong, right? 

As I write this post in 2024, it’s pretty common to find “cool” candy bars in gourmet markets around the country. But, that wasn’t the case in the 00′s. We came up with some pretty neat designs (a few of them above), and our sales team did pretty well too. We sold pretty successfully everywhere from Toys’R’Us to Home Depot to my local Santa Monica pharmacy (they could keep Devil Girl’s in stock!). But, we didn’t know how to source the bars with good chocolate at a good price, and of course, we had no idea how to ship the candy properly when the weather turned hot. Long story short, True Confections was eating money faster than KSP was, and honestly, I got sick of eating chocolate myself. 

It was fun while it lasted, but like I said up above, we were ahead of our time. 

And, as I’ve learned, over and over, a great idea is all well and good, but if you can’t execute... well, that’s that. 

[fredseibertdotcom]

My 5 lives. (A biography)

When I established Frederator Studios in the late 90s I needed a biography for the press release. As it laid itself out, even I –snore!– was bored. “In the 18th century, he... and then he... and then...” I didn’t have much of a “career path,” having, as I’m fond of saying, “bounced around the pop culture winds like a ping pong ball.” So I begged my co-worker and friend –and not for nothing, the co-creator of “ChalkZone”– writer Bill Burnett to come up with something that could weave together the disparate threads of my work life and would be totally readable. 

He titled it “I’ve Lived Three Lives,” but six years later, when I founded a new internet company and he realized that “four” was a lousy number, he re-wrote and re-named it “I’ve Lived Three 5 Lives,” reflecting my times in jazz recording, cable television executive-ing, media branding and advertising, streaming video start up-ing, and of course, cartoons. 

The first few paragraphs are updated regularly with “As I write this...” and so as I transcribe Bill’s piece below, you’ll be reading the opening from November 2023, but if you want the latest, click this link. 

.....

I’VE LIVED THREE FIVE LIVES (SO FAR) 

As I write this, I’ve announced a new life as an independent cartoon producer after 20+ years at Frederator, along with a new limited edition postcard series and The FredFilms Professional Library (here’s a preview of #7 in the library: Best of Original Cartoons). I’m honored that Casey Gonzalez and Flip Sarta have joined me as FredFilms’ development executives.

I’m still dedicated to putting creators first, staying original –always– and bringing you your next favorite cartoon.

My production of the Castlevania franchise is on Netflix and fans are flipping out over the new series too, Castlevania: Nocturne. Not to mention that Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake debuted on Max on Aug 31, 2023 with a second season already in production. Natasha Allegri’s Bee and PuppyCat is over on Netflix too –the soundtrack by Baths is streaming everywhere!– and the Costume Quest series and holiday special are streaming at Amazon Prime. And, not for nothing, watch out for a new generation of The Fairly OddParents coming on Nickelodeon and Netflix. I founded the Channel Frederator Network –the first streaming animation network– and it’s now distributing more than 3000 channels, making it the world’s largest animation, video game and entertainment network.

I’ve been honored to win several awards over the years. But, my biggest surprise came recently when the Emmys announced that I’d been inducted –along with several other luminaries– into their “Gold Circle.” The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (aka The Emmys) says “…the Gold and Silver Circle is a society of honor. Inductees have performed distinguished service within the industry, setting standards for achievement, mentoring, leadership, and professional accolades for 50 or 25 years, respectively. They represent the best and the brightest in the television community.” I am a lucky and humbled fellow.

This biography used to be called “I’ve Lived Three Lives,” but since it was written I’ve added a few more lives. I just can’t seem to stop living! Here’s a rundown of all that I’ve been doing:

@Frederator Studios 1998-2020 & FredFilms 2020-?

LIFE #5 — TELEVISION CARTOON PRODUCER

In 1992 I became president of Hanna-Barbera Cartoons. I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t know much about cartoons when I started out, but I had one simple idea: If you want great cartoons, make them the way the greatest cartoons of all time were made. That’s why we launched Hanna-Barbera’s “What A Cartoon!” shorts project. I wanted to create short, seven minute, funny cartoons with vivid characters and hilarious stories and gags—the way the great cartoonists of the 30s and 40s did it.

A lot of industry professionals thought I was crazy.

That grand experiment gave us 48 original shorts, an Academy Award nomination, two Emmy nominations, and seven original half-hour cartoon series (The Powerpuff Girls, Johnny Bravo, Cow & Chicken, I am Weasel, Courage The Cowardly Dog, What A Cartoon!, and Dexter’s Laboratory). And it had the effect of revitalizing the entire TV animation industry, which was in pretty poor shape when we started.

In 1997, Nickelodeon asked me to use the same techniques to produce cartoons for them. All in all, I’ve produced 250 character based, creator driven short cartoons with hundreds of new characters for Nick –at Random! Cartoons and Oh Yeah! Cartoons– Cartoon Network, and Frederator’s Channel Frederator and Cartoon Hangover.

Our cartoons feature the work of some of the most talented professionals in the business today and have spawned such award-winning, crowd pleasing hits as The Fairly Oddparents, My Life as a Teenage Robot, and Adventure Time. I created Channel Frederator in 2005, one of the first animation channels on the internet, helping to foment a video revolution that’s still unfolding. And in 2012, my team blasted off Cartoon Hangover, our channel for original productions, into the online universe.

In my lives, I’ve often found that being crazy isn’t such a bad thing. 

@Next New Networks 2006-2011

LIFE #4— INTERNET NETWORK EXECUTIVE

I’m the founder of a number of networks that have built the future of global streaming video.

I’ve always been drawn to community, whether it’s rock’n’roll (MTV), kids (Nickelodeon), or cartoons (Hanna-Barbera, Cartoon Network and Nick). Today the internet is the new town square, the place where people with fresh ideas are meeting and collaborating and creating a brave new pop culture. As television began to be possible in this world I knew I had to be part of it.

In 2006 I got together with a bunch of like-minded media mavens and created Next New Networks. Quickly, we began one of the leading video programmers online, helping to create the entire concept of multi-channel networks (MCNs), and in March 2011 YouTube acquired the company.

After the acquisition, I turned right around and formed Frederator Networks to continue the work started at Next New Networks, helping to creating the future of television. In rapid succession, we successfully launched Cartoon Hangover (one of select few partners in YouTube’s Original Channels Initiative), and started distributing independently owned animation channels on our newly formed Channel Frederator Network (as of now we’re at over 3000 channels, making us the world’s largest animation network). And with our audience asking us for more about videogames, TV and movies, we  started The Leaderboard Network and Cinematica.

Several years ago, a young former Frederator intern, David Karp, was working out of our New York office and developed the Tumblr platform. I became one of the company’s early investors and proudly served on its board of directors until Yahoo! acquired Tumblr in 2013.

Over the past 10 years, I took some guff from some of my Old Media buddies. They thought I was crazy to try such ambitious plans in a fledgling industry. But then, in my lives, I’ve often found that being crazy isn’t such a bad thing. So being crazy isn’t a liability in the Internet business, either.

@Fred/Alan, Inc. NY 1983-1992

LIFE # 3 — BRANDING & AGENCY MAN 

After quite a few productive years helping to give birth to TV networks (you can read about that in “Life # 2”) I formed a company with my producing partner, Alan Goodman. A lot of our associates thought we were crazy to leave sure-thing corporate success behind in favor of our own company, but once again, we made crazy work for us.

Because of Alan’s love for mid-twentieth century comedians we called our company Fred/Alan, and set up offices in Jackie Gleason’s former headquarters in the Park Sheraton hotel. Fred/Alan became the world’s first media branding company, a successful advertising agency/consulting firm/production company and think-tank for a wide range of new and established clients, including the MTV Networks, CBS, Showtime, HBO/ Cinemax, TBS, A&E, Lifetime, WNET, The Movie Channel, Sassy Magazine, Barq’s Soft Drinks, Comedy Central, and BMG Records. Most significantly, we retained a close relationship with networks we had helped create—MTV and its sister networks Nickelodeon and VH-1.

In 1985, Fred/Alan oversaw the relaunch of Nickelodeon. At the time it was a kids’ network that nobody watched – least of all kids. We redesigned the logo, created a new look, sound, and vocabulary for marketing/on-air promotion, and took Nickelodeon from worst to first in cable ratings in one year. Then we came up with the idea for Nick-at-Nite, creating the first television oldies network. Nick-at-Nite was an environment, a place…we called it TV Land! Our work took a bunch of old black and white reruns and turned them into an immediate ratings and sales success.

Not content with merely enhancing the value of existing shows, we also wanted to produce our own. So Fred/Alan launched Chauncey Street Productions with third partner Albie Hecht. We won three ACE awards for shows we made for HBO and Nickelodeon.

I’m especially proud of two of the last things Fred/Alan did before I headed for Hollywood. We made up the name and wrote the original branding and positioning for a new comedy channel—now known to the world as the successful and influential cable network Comedy Central. The next time you watch The Daily Show, South Park or any of Comedy Central’s other fine and funny shows, remember that it all started at Fred/Alan. We also helped launch MTV’s sister channel, VH-1. Then we relaunched it several times, and in 1991 dubbed it The Greatest Hits of Music Video, and the network’s ratings rose in 24 hours! That was the first time in history that VH-1 had turned a profit.

@MTV: Music Television 1980-1983

LIFE # 2 — CABLE PIONEER 

In 1981, when I was director of on-air promotion at The Movie Channel, my boss there asked me to help launch a fledgling cable network that would do nothing but play music all day and all night. It was going to be called MTV: Music Television and I became a founder. Back then very few people had cable. A lot of industry professionals thought the whole idea was crazy. 

I thought cable was a coming thing, and developed a strategy: If we could burn the MTV logo into viewers minds – literally ‘brand’ the network – it would create a sensation. Young rock fans would demand their MTV. The result was the now-famous “I Want My MTV” chant and the constantly mutating MTV logo, as changeable and fractious as the audience the channel reaches. We created hundreds of animated logos with dozens of the world’s independent studios. Our work won a special award from ASIFA, the international animation society, as well as CLIO awards from the advertising world. Adweek magazine named me one of eight “leaders of the new media.” During my time at the network I supervised everything that comprised MTV’s identity—programs, promotions, advertising, contests, premiums, and consumer products. And I am still in business with that network and its siblings in various ways today.

@WKCR-FM

LIFE # 1 — JAZZ CAT 

Before all that, I was in the music biz. Not so much as a musician, although I did play out a little in my youth. But I found other ways to express my love of music. While attending Columbia University I became a radio DJ and record producer. In the 70s I formed Oblivion Records, a blues and jazz label, and one of my independent jazz productions got nominated for a Grammy. I also helped make WHN in New York City the most listened-to country radio station in the United States.

…..

Does it seem strange for a former jazz cat to morph into a TV executive, and then turn into a cartoon producer who sets out to pioneer the new frontier of video on the Internet? Not to me. For me it’s all part of a very clear continuum. I’m attracted to community, to places where disenfranchised people find what they love, and find each other and get creative. I’m attracted to heart and soul and humor, and to things that are wild, weird and unpredictable. I guess you could say I’m attracted to crazy. With any luck I’ll have a few more crazy lives to add to this document in the years ahead.

– November 2023 (Heartfelt thanks to Bill Burnett for this biography) 

Illustrators (left to right): James Kochalka, Jeaux Janovsky, Jack Hinatsu, Dave Wasson, Stanley Chow 

[fredseibertdotcom]

THE WATT WORKS FAMILY [1990 catalog]

Download THE WATT WORKS FAMILY at Scribd

This WATT catalog is 35 years old, maybe in the age of the internet, their last one. 

Working with Carla Bley and Michael Mantler was one of the great inspirations of my young work life. Which is probably why I’ve posted a number times of some of their work, from the time I worked with them and afterwards too. 

Why am I so interested? Carla and Mike were perfect models of talent, sure, but also resilience, perseverance, determination, and blind, stupid, confidence. We first became acquainted after I crashed a recording session for Carla’s ‘operatic’ Escalator Over the Hill, which they financed themselves, and out of frustration, released and distributed themselves on JCOA Records. which eventually spawned the self determination of the New Music Distribution Service and WATT Works, a label for their continuing works. 

When I bumped into this 1990 catalog from THE WATT WORKS FAMILY (by then with bass/composer stalwart Steve Swallow, daughter/composer Karen Mantler [and her cat Arnold], and distributed internationally by ECM Records) I was struck, not only by the sheer volume of personal, completely –can I emphasize completely?– independent work, but also the sheer value of creating this work self sufficiently. It made me suddenly aware of why I felt they were so influential to me. 

Are there any other musical composers who’ve succeeded in getting their music recorded with no outside creative interference? Who, because of that complete independence, were able to experiment –often successfully, quite a few, not so much*– across such a wide range of the possibilities of their music? And think about it, what composers have you ever listened to who were completely unafraid of reaching beyond the box they were put in (’jazz’ in their cases) to artists that had the unique talents, and not for nothing, commercial possibilities? (Their records have spanned the Western world of contemporary music... from the jazz world, Don Cherry, Cecil Taylor, Pharaoh Sanders, Charlie Haden, Larry Coryell, Roswell Rudd, but also Linda Ronstadt, Jack Bruce, Robert Wyatt, Don Preston, Terry Adams, and of course, I’ve left out dozens of others.) 

Let me stress, it was unbelievably hard for them to hit those accomplishments,  no one can say that success is easy. But, it is their very independence that gave them room to try. You know what they say... “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

.....

From the introduction: 

Now the truth can be told. The WATT recording label is not the idealistic, uncompromising, visionary creation of two young revolutionaries. No, Michael Mantler and Carla Bley started WATT, almost 20 years ago, to make money. 

Like all musicians, they assumed that once the world got to hear their unique individual styles, fame and riches would follow. So they slaved over each new release, always sure that the latest one would sell millions.

Carla went through many phases. After realizing that no one was interested in hearing her zany capricious fantastic amazingly intricate concoctions for large assortments of weird and wonderful musicians, she tried to write simple little songs for small, boring groups of anonymous hacks. Mike, on the other hand, stuck firmly to his grandiose style, turning out gaunt tragic forlorn bleak emotionally distraught masterpieces, certain that someday his music would pay off. 

Finally giving up all thoughts of ever cashing in on their own efforts, they formed an·auxiliary company, XtraWATT, and started looking for young talent to exploit. The first sucker that they stumbled upon was Steve Weisberg. He was definitely young, and ready to work for nothing. It wasn't difficult to recruit 20 other desperate musicians to play on his album, I CAN'T STAND ANOTHER NIGHT ALONE (IN BED WITH YOU), by promising to pay them lots of money when it came out. 

Next to fall for the XtraWATT scam was young veteran jazz bassist Steve Swallow, who, desirous of getting his collection of overkeening faux-negre soul ballads recorded, handed over his life savings to Mantler·to cover "expenses", and even agreed to call the album CARLA.

But word of the racket got out, and no one else could be found who was willing to record for XtraWATT. In desparation, Mantler and Bley forced their own child, Karen, to learn a few chords and simple melodies. They even tried to train their cat to sing the resulting ditties. (Most of those efforts had to be replaced by unsuspecting teenaged humans, but the album was still called MY CAT ARNOLD, to avoid paying royalties.)  

In spite of Mantler's greedy misdoings (word has it that Bley is just a pawn in his game), his victims still adore him, having nothing to compare their music business experiences to. Even Weisberg, who has confessed that he has ambitions of someday graduating into the clutches of a big-time criminal at a real record company, is embarrassingly grateful.  

Naturally, the entire WATT/XtraWATT family was honored to go along with his latest plot. Hopefullly, some nice journalist or salesperson will notice how interesting and valuable the music is, and persuade the public to finally fork over those dollars! 

.....

*Some reviews, taken from the catalog: 

“…the finest examples of progressive large ensemble work written and recorded in America in 1975.” –Downbeat 

“This record is a real dog.”  

“It’s delightful.” –Melody Maker 

“…the least listenable record I have ever heard.” –Melody Maker 

“Everything Jesus Christ Superstar should have been and isn’t.” –Changes 

“This is a record which all rock musicians as well as general audiences should listen to with care.” –Rolling Stone 

[fredseibertdotcom]

I wasn’t really all that familiar with the American Institute of Graphic Arts/AIGA when I got a call in 2000 telling me they’d awarded me what turned out to be my first Lifetime Achievement medal. Honestly, I was a little freaked out, I was still in my 40s. Was this it, was it over? But, I guess given that my biography, written by Bill Burnett is titled “I’ve Lived 5 Lives,” I shouldn’t have been too put off, after all it was only for one of those lives –#3– which was pretty much done. I was already on my way into a couple more. 

Of course, along with my slight embarrassment at getting a design award without actually being a designer, I was more than honored. And floored that an esteemed historian and writer, Steven Heller, wrote the appreciation. 

Essay for Lifetime Achievement Medalist American Institute of Graphic Arts /AIGA

The Instigator: Fred Seibert 

By Steven Heller 

American Institute of Graphic Arts/AIGA www.aiga.org 164 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010

Fred Seibert’s career proves that it is not necessary to be a Yale/Cranbrook/RISD/SVA educated, AIGA/TypeDirectors/Art Director’s Club-award-winning, bona fide/pedigreed/certified graphic designer, or any other kind of designer, to create the most indelible visual identities for some of the most visible pop culture media in the world. You just have to be a fan. A fervent, ardent, passionate devotee of “people who do fantastic work in music and visual stuff,” as Seibert puts it.

Oh, yeah, you also have to have the vision thing.

Without vision, and the talent, know-how and ambition to realize it, Seibert might have become a tie-dyed-in-the-wool Dead Head selling pot brownies from the back of a psychedelicized microbus. Instead, he instigated, orchestrated, facilitated and otherwise dreamed-up the nascent visual personas of MTV and Nickelodeon, back when they were truly vanguards of the pop-cultural revolution. In the ensuing years he has exerted a significant influence on the look and content of animated cartoons, first as president of Hanna-Barbera and later as the founder of Frederator, a cartoon production company that provides programming to the Cartoon Network. If these accomplishments were not enough for one lifetime, he has recently become president of both MTV Networks Online and Nickelodeon Online, where he has had a hand in transforming the Internet by provoking, stimulating and triggering numerous creative collisions.

“Seibert may not fit the accepted definition of a graphic designer, but he practices design in the emerging sense of the term, as a producer of ideas,” says Forrest Richardson, a graphic designer and a member of the 1999 AIGA Medal selection committee. “Seibert designs in the broadest sense by enlisting other people who create unprecedented ideas. Just look at what he has spawned.” 

What he spawned was a series of environments—at MTV, Nickelodeon, Hanna-Barbera and the Cartoon Network—where creative misfits were able to create unconventional film and animation that otherwise would have had few, if any, outlets. And possessed with a keen ability to see beyond the current thing to the next big thing, and even a few things beyond that, Seibert has a knack for predicting what the public will like, because as a fan he likes it too. In a formal sense, he constructs complex matrices of interconnected concepts designed to support overarching visual communications that project mnemonic identifying images. More simply put, he matches the right person with the best project to get extraordinary results. Moreover, he understands the distinction between integration and interference and rarely asks creative people to slavishly execute his own ideas. “They will do it grudgingly, and expensively,” he explains. Rather, he defines contexts, provides opportunities and encourages individual points of view that are used as components of larger programs. He employs those people—young and old, neophyte and veteran—who can interpret a basic blueprint and transcend its confines. So in addition to being an ersatz designer, Seibert is a full-blown impresario. He is also the proverbial whiz kid, the one who always dreamed of making great things.

“The Beatles proved that you could zig and zag through various polarities and still be the thing that you were,” recalls Seibert, who was born in 1951 and heard the Beatles for the first time when he was 12 years old. He still speaks of that defining moment with breathless enthusiasm. “It was a really inspiring thing for me to know that you could go from Sergeant Pepper’s to the White Album, from ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ to ‘A Day In The Life,’ from Rubber Soul to Let It Be. I also found inspiration in the fact that they were the ultimate 20th century media thing. They wanted to be a beast of the media and appeal to millions and millions and millions of people, and make trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars, but they did not think that that was in any way counter to making art.”

Seibert always wanted to be in the music business. In his early 20s he had a brief stint as a DJ on a college radio station and later produced avant-garde jazz records for a small independent label. Yet he failed to attain his goal of pop record producer because, he laments, “I didn’t smoke enough dope.” At 27, he stumbled into the promotion side of the radio business and was hired by adman Dale Pon, who introduced him to Bob Pittman. Pittman was a 25-year-old radio programmer who had just switched over to the cable TV business to shepherd a new venture: a channel that would show music videos 24 hours a day. Pittman invited Seibert to join him in the venture that would become MTV, and with trepidation he complied. “I watched television, I didn’t make it,” Seibert says about his initial misgivings. And yet all those hours spent in front of the tube had left him with a natural affinity for the medium. 

The cable business was so new that virtually anything Seibert tried earned praise. One of his first promos was a kinetic montage of images cut to the beat of claps in the song, “Car Wash.” “They [the bigwigs] thought it was an amazing thing,” he reports. “I guess television didn’t usually do things to the beat.” Virtually unfettered Seibert continued to intuitively brand the emerging channel through quirky spots and bumpers. “In those days we didn’t know the word ‘brand,’ and so we broke many of the rules that had governed television’s identity for decades,” he remembers. Seibert, with his friend and MTV colleague Alan Goodman, used cable TV as a laboratory for a slew of unprecedented animations. The idea was to entertain rather than push sales pitches down the audience’s throats. And in the process, Seibert wanted to unleash the talents of creative people he had always admired.  

As a teen, Seibert was inspired by the wellspring of innovative graphic design and packaging that came out of Columbia Records during the ‘60s and early ‘70s. He particularly admired the work of art director John Berg who, he explains, “created a language that reflected the wildly diverse sensibilities of type design, photographic imagery and portraiture of the time. And yet there was this amazing consistency, a quality of ideas that went through the whole thing.” (Inspired by this work, Seibert taught himself to “design” covers for his own company, Oblivion Records, which he founded while working at MTV.) When he launched the promotions for MTV, his model was not Lou Dorfsman’s legendary advertising for CBS Television, which was considered the industry standard, but Berg’s art direction for Columbia. “I wanted the MTV visuals to be like album covers for television,” he says. Seibert began his work at MTV with the idea that since music was multifaceted, the network should avoid projecting a rigid corporate persona or, for that matter, anything corporate looking. The television industry revered the sanctity of logos: the CBS Eye (1951), NBC Peacock (1956) and ABC circle (1961) embodied the networks’ respective ethos and were thus immutable and inviolable. So Seibert’s first instinct was to avoid the I.D. firms that churned out the most expensive corporate identity systems. Instead, he commissioned a childhood friend, Frank Olinsky, who was a principal along with Pat Gorman and Patti Rogoff in Manhattan Design, a very small graphics and illustration office tucked behind a tai chi studio in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. Although they had no previous corporate identity experience, Seibert chose them “because I’d been friends with Frank since I was four years old, and he was talented even then.” He also loved rock and roll. Luckily, Bob Pittman agreed that the logo could take any form as long as the “call letters” were readable.  

The first version of the “M” was inspired when Patti Rogoff walked past a graffiti-scrawled schoolyard wall. At that moment she realized MTV’s logo had to be made of three-dimensional letters that exuded street culture. After many false starts, Pat Gorman finessed a large M and hand-scrawled a little “TV” onto it, which Olinsky thought was ugly. He argued that if the concept was going to work, a better rendering of “TV” was imperative. But their real breakthrough came when Gorman and Olinsky decided that the M could be something like a screen on which various images could be “projected.” And the M could become an object—a birthday cake, or a bologna sandwich or whatever else they wanted to make it. The shape of the M could be transformed into anything, as long as it continued to look like an M. Back at headquarters, MTV executives were troubled by the solution. They felt that the M was not legible. And their lawyers argued that a mutable logo would require repeated registration each time a different iteration was used. Seibert, however, was not concerned. Five variations of the logo were pinned up on his wall for weeks because he couldn’t make up his mind which one he liked best. Finally, he decided it would be “very rock and roll” to use them all in animated sequences. It seemed like the problem was solved.  

Still, the head of sales lobbied to kill the logo because he didn’t want to send such a flagrantly unconventional design to potential advertising buyers. Seibert recalls that he was asked by the muckety-mucks if he really thought that this logo would last as long as the CBS Eye. His answer was a resounding “No.” “Why would I think that a rock thing would stand up to the icon of TV logos?” The executives insisted that Seibert approach some “real” designers, including Push Pin Studios and Lou Dorfsman, which he did. But Seibert kept total faith in the original idea and slyly admits, “I sandbagged the assignment. They all did terrible work and then we were out of time.” So with a small type variation on the “Music Television” subtitle, the original was approved a few weeks before the new channel went on the air, on August 1, 1981.  

The televised MTV logo was the perfect embodiment both of raucous rock and roll and of MTV’s promise to change forever ordinary viewing (and listening) habits. Its animated mutability made it as anticipated a feature of daily programming as the music videos themselves. Over time various illustrators were hired, including John van Hammersveld, Mark Marek, Lynda Barry and Steven Guarnaccia, to transform the basic prop into mini-metaphors. But the most important vehicle for establishing the logo’s supremacy were 25 10-second animated spots in which the logo changed design and meaning. This included the most recurring and iconic spot, an appropriation of the famous photograph of the first man landing on moon with a vibrating, ever-changing MTV logo used in place of the American flag. “Ultimately,” recalls Seibert, “we did three or four hundred promos that were the real heartbeat of the ‘newness’ of MTV.” 

Four years after MTV launched, Seibert and Alan Goodman helped restructure a foundering Nickelodeon, transforming it from a repository of stale cartoons to a content-driven destination of original entertainment for young and old. Unlike network TV, where programming aims for high ratings at all costs (by filling the air with trendy action heroes or “When Pets Attack”), Nickelodeon was determined to do things right, with stories and characters that were good from a kid’s point of view. “If we did that well, then we’d make money,” says Seibert. Within a year, the channel’s ratings had made a huge jump. The duo also devised Nick-at-Nite, a brilliant scheme to broadcast reruns of baby-boom TV classics during the time slots when younger kids were in bed. For Seibert this was more than a retrogimmick, it was a move to philosophically position the channel as a repository of great pop culture. “Back then, old television was considered even more disposable than old music,” he explains, “and I was determined to prove—even to Gerry Laybourne who ran Nickelodeon—that it wasn’t junk, that it has cultural value.” 

Which is the reason why after leaving MTV and Nickelodeon he accepted the top job at Hanna-Barbera, the cartoon studio known for its pioneering “limited animation” style, yet which for decades had been churning out mediocre reprises of their cartoon classics, which included “The Flintstones,” “The Jetsons,” “Yogi Bear,” and others. Seibert’s understood that with the success of Matt Groening’s “The Simpsons” and John Kricfalusi’s “Ren and Stimpy,” a new generation of cartoon creators was waiting to be tapped. He immediately altered the archaic internal organization of Hanna-Barbera, which emphasized production over concept and technicians over artists. His model was based on creative teams that enabled new ideas to take precedence over old chestnuts. He soon oversaw the creation of HB’s first new series in decades, “Two Stupid Dogs.” The cartoon did not do well, yet out of this failure he devised a unique concept called “What A Cartoon.” Instead of investing a lot of money in one 13-show series, he used the same capital to produce 48 speculative cartoons, each made by one artist and a team of production people. “What A Cartoon” was an anthology of speculations, and the most successful ones were spun-off into series, later produced by Frederator. The successes included such current hits as “Dexter’s Laboratory,” “The Powerpuff Girls,” “Cow and Chicken,” and “Johnny Bravo.”    Seibert is a product of 1960s mass media, and he admits to a somewhat schizophrenic relationship with the branding that he has done so well. “I am deeply cynical about the goals of branding, which to me, in its purest form, means higher CPMs [cost-per-thousand] for advertising. But I realize that the values that I am looking to change through the work that I do ultimately give value to advertising. That’s the cynical side.” The other side of the relationship is more deeply rooted: “I feel like a ‘60s child, always attracted to things that were disenfranchising to me,” he says. And this is what comes through in the music, cartoons and comics he has fervently tried to integrate into today’s mainstream. “I was very resentful of the fact that in the ‘60s people said that the music I liked was ‘disposable.’ It definitely wasn’t disposable to me. So one of the things in the back of my mind in the work I was doing at MTV was, ‘I’ll make them listen!’ and give this stuff new value.”

MTV and Nickelodeon are wildly successful today. And given the current reach of cable and satellite TV, their identities may be more recognized internationally than all the networks combined. Irreverent, oddball and sometimes-gross cartoons also fill television now more than ever. Seibert must be given credit for a fair share of this.   

Yet Seibert’s chronic restlessness prevents him from basking too long in the glow of previous accomplishments. For the past three years he has been working in the newest mass medium, as a player in the Internet. After his stint at Hanna-Barbera, he became president of MTV Networks Online, a position he now holds at Nickelodeon Online. He confides that “I don’t have a bottom of my toes feeling yet” about the new media. Yet complete mastery of a medium has never been a handicap for him before. Rather, his unflagging enthusiasm for the creative potential of the medium is what makes him invaluable. “What I do with the Internet is find unbelievably talented people, the way I always have, put them in a room where the best ideas can come out, then defend their right to have ideas and fail or succeed.” As a fan, he adds, “I follow these great people and I’ve found myself attracted to places where great people are attracted. I figured that by the rub-off of their greatness, I could feel better.” Seibert’s modesty is not false. His exposure to a legion of creative people who have worked for him has definitely enriched his life. But in the final analysis, because Seibert has spent his career instigating creative people, the media, popular culture and the mass audience has been greatly enriched, too.

Steven Heller, art director of the New York Times Book Review, is the founder and co-chair of the School of Visual Arts MFA/Design program. He is the author of over 70 books on graphic design and popular art, including Paul Rand (Phaidon), Typology: Type Design from the Victorian Era To The Digital Age (Chronicle Books), Letterforms: Bawdy Bad and Beautiful (Watson Guptill), Design Literacy, Design Dialogues, Sex Appeal: The Art of Allure in Graphic Design and Advertising Art and The Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption (all Allworth Press).

[fredseibertdotcom]

Next New Networks, Part 3.2

From Part 1: Emil Rensing and I, with a huge assist from future Tumblr creator David Karp, stumbled into the brave new world of online video without much of a plan.

From Part 2: Our friend –my former partner at Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, and our future Next New Networks partner– Jed Simmons introduced us to Spark Capital in Boston, who wanted to partner and fund Next New.

From Part 3: Our path to our initial venture capital funding. 

This post isn’t my continuation of the Next New Networks history, but it’s an early interview, a moment in time from our launch period. 

Depending on where you’re coming from you could know Steven Heller as an art director, graphic design historian or the most prolific design writer (currently with 111 books on his Amazon author page) known to the Western world. I’m lucky enough to have known him in all these capacities, and with even great fortune that he has sought me out a few times to be interviewed. This one, for  the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) in 2007, was from the dawn of my streaming video company Next New Networks. You decide how prescient, or foolish, my answers seem with almost 20 years of hindsight. 

I Want My FredTV: An Interview with Fred Seibert

By Steven Heller  October 23, 2007 

Fred Seibert has excelled in more media careers than there are media forms to master—or so it might seem. In the ’80s he was the creative force behind MTV’s original on-air promotions and helped propel Nickelodeon and its spin-off networks to their current success. He went on to become president of Hanna-Barbera, and even co-founded a chocolate company for entertainment-licensed candy. Currently, this 2000 AIGA Medal recipient runs Frederator Studios and Channel Frederator in New York, feeding animation and other comic content to cable TV (particularly the Cartoon Network) and via podcast. Over the past year, Seibert has emerged as one of internet TV’s prime movers and shakers. His Next New Networks is the next big thing in the revolution from conventional TV to something, well, next—and new. We caught up with Seibert long enough to channel his views on community-driven content and programming for the niches.

Heller: You call your new venture Next New Networks, but are they networks in the conventional sense of the television experience?

Next New Networks logo (top) and mascot, the N-Bot.

Seibert: Yes and no. The definition of a media network has morphed tremendously over the years. From the ’30s through the ’70s, in radio and television, a broadcast network meant a bunch of local stations that played a lot of the same programs, delivered to them by telephone wires. There were only a few networks, so they all had very broad, mass-appeal programming to satisfy everyone in the family. By the ’80s a cable TV network came to mean 24 hours a day with dozens of narrowly defined programming genres (delivered by satellite) like news, sports, music, kids, weather, what have you. Well, those telephone cables and satellites have gone out the window, anyone can access anything they want, and at Next New Networks we feel that. 

Heller: So, how do you define the new television network?

Seibert: It’s a place where you can go to satisfy exactly the kind of programming you’ve always wanted but conventional delivery systems could not deliver because of cost and distribution limitations. Now the world is different. We watch television in lots of different ways on lots of different boxes. We “cable,” we “Tivo,” we “iPhone,” we “YouTube.” Those telephone cables and satellites have gone out the window. 

Heller: And then there’s on-demand TV... 

Seibert: Our Next New Networks are on-demand—not continuous play—micro-television networks that serve specialized communities slivered by specific interests. They’re more like magazines and radio stations than what we’ve all become used to on broadcast and cable. We’re not just cars but fast European cars, Corvettes, or street racing. Not just fashion, but do-it-yourself fashion, jewelry fashion, the fashion in every woman’s closet. Not just entertainment, but sophisticated cartoons, indie film, and internet culture. And all our networks are branded experiences where the distance between the producers who make the network and the viewers who watch, promote and distribute our networks is almost indistinguishable.

Next New Networks programming includes sports-blog coverage, Corvettes and sew-it-yourself fashion. Posters designed & illustrated by Frank Olinsky. 

Heller: What do you want to communicate through your hundred new networks?

Seibert: We love watching TV, we love making TV, and there’s nothing better than being able to make an audience happy, no matter how narrow their interests. If we can do that a hundred times a week, we’ve done our jobs.

Jessica Borutski, winner of a 2007 Channel Frederator Award.

Heller: Are these just trial balloons and whatever doesn’t burst will continue to fly? Or do you feel that they all have viability?

Seibert: All our networks are really partnerships between our talented staff and their audiences. Everything starts out when we’ve found there’s a vibrant community underserved by television programming. Sometimes they’ll embrace what we’re offering, sometimes we’ll be off the mark. 

Heller: I know you have a show about radical knitting—I guess anything these days can be made into a TV show—but are there standards?

Seibert: Sure. If an audience, small or large, falls in love with what we’re presenting, my standards have been exceeded.

The Meth Minute 39 on Channel Frederator

Heller: What are your top ten, and why? 

Seibert: You don’t really think I like one child more than another, do you?

Heller: Are these new shows predicated on the fact that everyone can be a TV producer? 

Seibert: Yes and no. At our joint, the audience is a complete part of our networks in any of a number of ways. 

Heller: How so?

Seibert: Anyone in any era with talent and craft could be a producer. Only now there are no significant barriers—technological or financial—for the producer to expose their work to an audience, a distributor, or a network. We find our producers in what you’d think of as “normal” channels of professional referrals, but also when a viewer sends in a film that blows us out of our chairs and leads to a call out.

Heller: YouTube has certainly changed the way we think about broadcasting. Isn’t this all just a scrapbook of videos produced in any which way?

Pulp Secret is all comics, all the time.

Seibert: I think maybe you’re reacting to all of the “user-submitted” action—15 seconds of fame—out there on the internet. At Next New Networks our audiences are always part of the networks. Sometimes it’s with video they submit to us—a cell phone video, a million-dollar cartoon, a video comment—or with a blog comment or phone call. And in a complete business revolution, community members are actually important distributors for us, since they can take various feeds we offer them to literally run our networks on their own websites or blogs. 

Heller: If the do-it-yourself aesthetic reigns, what is the new definition of professionalism?

Fred, drawn by Craig Kellman.

Seibert: Hmm. There’s always been room for DIY in the modern media era of the last hundred years. Orchestral musicians bemoaned the primitives who played homemade guitars in the Mississippi Delta or amateurs who pounded out “Louie Louie” in a Seattle garage to the top of the pop charts. Then, as now, about the only distance between the first song of these “uncultivateds” and a career was enough control of their skills to create longevity from an accidental phenomenon. 

Heller: And TV, too? 

Seibert: It’s no different now in television. Truth be told, I was made vice-president of production at MTV in the early ’80s before I’d ever set eyes on a television camera. My boss, Bob Pittman, told me not to worry: “You’ll figure it out.” I guess I did. And by the way, most of the young folks we meet who want to work with us now, whether it’s from our office in New York or their garages back home, are a lot more craft-literate than I am today. 

Heller: What is the business model? How do you make money? 

Seibert: Advertising, as far as we know. Broadcasters have relied only on advertising for ninety years. Cable started as subscription, evolved to advertising, and quickly added fees paid by cable operators to create their revenue streams. Who knows where this version of the business will evolve?

Heller: What is the artistic model? Who decides what will work?

Seibert: At first it’s our staff—currently about thirty people ranging in age from 19-to-56-years old, with a variety of experiences from recent college dropouts to full-bore professional filmmakers. But, you know, ultimately, like most everything else we actually pay attention to, the audience finally decides what it loves. 

Heller: With so much on the internet how do you expect to compete—and who do you expect to compete with? 

Seibert: Isn’t that the question? 

Heller: After Next New Networks, what’s Next?

Seibert: Ha! If you find out, let me know. About the Author: Steven Heller, co-chair of the Designer as Author MFA at School of Visual Arts, is the author of Merz to Emigre and Beyond: Avant Garde Magazine Design of the Twentieth Century (Phaidon Press), The Education of a Comics Artist co-edited with Michael Dooley (Allworth Press), The Education of a Graphic Designer, Second Edition, and The Education of an Art Director with Véronique Vienne (Allworth Press).  www.hellerbooks.com

[fredseibertdotcom]

Next New Networks, Part 3

I’m going to try, in as few posts as possible, to create a coherent timeline of the short, eventful life of Next New Networks, an early, consequential moment in streaming video history. 

From Part 1: Emil Rensing and I, with a huge assist from future Tumblr creator David Karp, stumbled into the brave new world of online video without much of a plan. 

From Part 2: Our friend –my former partner at Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, and our future Next New Networks partner– Jed Simmons introduced us to Spark Capital in Boston, who wanted to partner and fund Next New. 

Part 3: Late 2006 

What do we do now? 

Once Spark signaled their interest, we needed to get serious. I still had Frederator Studios, my successful and increasingly busy independent cartoon production company, but the excitement of this opportunity was overwhelming. Even if I was significantly older than the typical internet entrepreneur, I felt that my background in media and production could be meaningful. The first phase of the consumer internet required deep engineering skills because the infrastructure was still somewhat nascent. Web 2.0 had developed enough tools that even someone with my limited skills could participate. Besides, I had Emil on my side, someone who had a unique understanding of the state of the tech world. 

By summertime, after a variety of conversations and meetings, Emil and I settled on a co-founding team. Jed Simmons, of course. Emil had a start up friend –Tim Shey– who’d sold his DC based, interactive agency and moved to New York where he was consulting with some early stage video companies. I was stretched to thin to have an operating role in the joint, so we all agreed that my childhood friend and adult colleague Herb Scannell –former Vice Chairman of MTV Networks and CEO of Nickelodeon– would be a perfect CEO. Luckily, he agreed, and our management line up was in place. (David Karp would be our founding developer, until he launched Tumblr several months later, of course). 

We can leave the machinations of filling out the A-round of investment aside. Suffice to say, many venture capitalists were uninterested in any idea that didn’t have unique software attached –we didn’t– but we put together an investor group and board of directors that were excited with our vision. 

Next New Networks posters designed and illustrated by Frank Olinsky

Our vision? ah. yes. By the time we were on the road pitching our wares, we had taken the basics of VOD Cars and Channel Frederator and put together a plan that was based on “communities of interest,” which we felt would be the engines of viewership and growth. As Tim Shey later wrote: 

Next New Networks popularized the ideas of videoblogging and advertiser-supported online video, and pioneered the multi-channel network (MCN) business model and the concept of audience development, assembling a diverse and successful portfolio of original programming including hit channels Barely Political, VSauce, and ThreadBanger, and a network of independent creators such as The Gregory Brothers—racking up over 2 billion video views and thirteen Webby Awards, more than any online media company at the time.

Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times was probably the writer that caught onto what we had accomplished better than most.

By March 2007, we were fully funded with our first round, expanded past the Frederator/NY office into a larger space in the same building on Park Avenue South, and started to put together an amazing start up staff that could actually execute. At least, what we’d morphed our vision into.  Super distribution! 

(More to come.) 

[fredseibertdotcom]

Next New Networks, Part 2 : “YouTube will be our distributor.”

I’m going to try, in as few posts as possible, to create a coherent timeline of the short, eventful life of Next New Networks, an early, consequential moment in streaming video history. 

From Part 1: There was almost no “professional” quality video on iTunes in November 2005. The result for us? 1 million downloads in the first 30 days! We had some hits! 

Part 2: Early 2006 

Wait! What? iTunes? What about YouTube?! 

Let’s set the scene of online video in late 2005. The consumer internet is still coming into its own. Broadband connections, which will supercharge video consumption, have barely made themselves known. Vimeo is first, but starved by its corporate parent, YouTube is going to be the big thing, but it’s still independent, Google has launched its own (ultimately failed) competitor. No one understands who/what online video is for. 

In our case, we announced Channel Frederator and VOD Cars as “video podcasts” and YouTube was wedding videos and baby’s birthday party. Apple iTunes was the place for podcasts, and Emil and David Karp were the only two people who’d pointed out to me that iTunes had recently been optimized to handle video, not just audio. 

What did it all mean to me? Who the fuck knows? I had no particular plan, neither did Emil. Things just seemed cool, it was fun. I had a loose professional agenda, but it was a cartoon agenda, not particularly an online video strategy. 

That said, as our numbers kept growing, and Steve Jobs used our logo in live presentations for the Video iPod, I said to Emil: 

“You know, if we could launch 100 of these channels with this kind of performance, we could have our own media company!” Emil nodded, and we decided to register www.NextNewNetworks.com in January 2006. What the hey! 

Like a lot of people, I was intrigued with the notion that the internet would allow everyone to watch "television" (video?) everywhere. Emil pushed me along as early as 2001, showing me how internet TV would be better served with a user interface like early AOL, prophetically the same as we now have with so-called "smart TVs."

Well, great! But still, no plan. 

Jed Simmons @Next New Networks 2009

Until Jed Simmons started showing up. 

Jed and I had been partners at Turner Broadcasting, the top two dogs running Hanna-Barbera Cartoons for Ted Turner until he sold his whole company to Time Warner (now WBD). He’d moved to the UK, got involved in venture, moved back to NewYork, I moved back to NY to run MTV’s online business for a minute, quit and opened Frederator/NY in addition to LA’s Frederator Studios. I suggested that he take a desk in our office and we could get into trouble together. The office was an open plan (I didn’t want to spend money to put up walls) so he could hear everything my big mouth spouted. 

There might have been any plan, no strategy, but it sure was exciting. Thousands of views a day, hundreds of submissions of animated shorts –people still hadn’t realized that they could control the internet as well as well could– it was a brave new world. I would tell anyone who would listen how neat it all was. 

Jed would ask me about what I was going to do with it all, I pushed him away. One day, he asked if I’d talked to any VCs. I didn’t know what he was talking about. He patiently explained and told me that a buddy we’d worked with at Turner was a venture capital guy now, Jed would invite him in. Sure. 

Within a few days we were describing how we did what we did and why we thought it could be expanded. He blubbered about how YouTube would beat us, blah blah blah. 

“YouTube is going to be our distributor,” Emil piped in. I had no idea what he was talking about. Distributor, what?! But, experience had already proved to me that Emil was always right about these things, so I blah blah’d about it myself. Our friend was not at all impressed (he rarely was when I had an idea at Turner either), and then he left. So be it. 

Then, a couple weeks later, he was back. But, this time he came with Santo Politi, one of his bosses, a founder and general partner at Spark Capital in Boston. We were at lunch downstairs in the French restaurant (owned by Anthony Bourdain’s partner and the ex-boyfriend of a former MTV colleague) and I went into what had become a 20 minute blah blah. In 10 minutes, Santo interrupted.

“OK, we’re in.” 

What? 

“We’re in. We’ll syndicate an $8 million, A Round.” 

Emil, Jed and I looked at each other. What???

(More next time.) Part 1 here. 

Next New Networks -by Tim Shey by Fred Seibert

[fredseibertdotcom]

Next New Networks, Part 1

I'm going to try, in as few posts as possible, to create a coherent timeline of the short, eventful life of Next New Networks, an early, consequential moment in streaming video history.

The Pre-history, Summer 2005

Emil Rensing and I created Next New Networks, kind of as a lark.

The company was one of the earliest of dozens of internet video start-ups that were created near the beginning of Web 2.0 ("websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture, and interoperability" says Wikipedia). It sure wasn't the biggest –that would be YouTube– but IMHO, it had a lot to do with how the first generation of online video would play out.

Like any sentient human being at the turn of the century, the early explosion of the internet had included me in its wake. Little did I know that it would collide with my many lives in the media to lead me on to a path that would give me a front row seat. 

I’d moved back to New York from Los Angeles in the summer of 1999 to become the first/only president of the ill fated MTV Networks Online, where I’d met, hired, and quit the same day as Emil Rensing by early 2001. We became partners in Frederator/NY working with various media companies on their internet strategies and producing television. Following the Internet 1.0 implosion over the next four years we futzed around with various projects.

Somewhere in the summer of 2005, our friend and colleague Roy Langbord showed me a comedy video by Julie Klausner called “Cat News,” on some website called “Channel 102.” Julie wrote and directed a really funny video, but as someone who started as a media executive, I was even more intrigued by the site that was presenting it. Channel 101 (founded in LA by a stunningly talented creep named Dan Harmon) and Channel 102 (NY) were taking advantage of the efficiency of online video to give opportunity to TV wannabes to produce and find a community.

"Cat News" by Julie Klausner on Channel 102, my inspiration for Channel Frederator

I thought that a similar structure to solve a problem I had. Ever since moving back to New York, even with my two talented co-workers at Frederator Studios, my cartoon production company (The Fairly OddParents, ChalkZone, My Life as a Teenage Robot, more) I was feeling out of touch, since the primary animation community was LA based. I knew there were talented, could-be creators outside of Hollywood, but it was extremely difficult to search them out and put together a relationship. Online video, in 2005 with broadband increasing exponentially, was a way to circumvent limitations and bring new talent into the mainstream.

On a whim, I called our former intern, the 19 year old, pre-Tumblr David Karp, showed him 101/102 and asked if he could build me a duplicate for our needs.

“Uh, sure, but why?” I went through my thought process. “I get it, but why? Why build it like them? They’re so... old school. So 2000.” Built on a series of clunky, tiny Quicktime videos, he seemed to have a point. But, the alternative?

David pulled out a Sony PSP, and made the point that portable video was on the way, with an Apple Video iPod less than a year away. 

“Build your site for portable video.” I figured he was closer to the market than I was, and when he assured me that the cost would be under $5000 for my experiment, I gave the green light. Colleague Eric Homan selected three shorts from our friends, David and his friend named the channel and designed the logo, David built the site and wrote/edited the actual episode.

By November 2005, we were ready to launch Channel Frederator through iTunes, with –surprise!– an Apple Video iPod announced just two weeks before. David was right, but Apple beat his prediction by about a year.

Filling Emil in all the way, he decided to take his collection of fast sports car video and pulled together his own “video podcast” called VODCars.

There was almost no “professional” quality video on iTunes in November 2005. The result for us? 1 million downloads in the first 30 days!

We had some hits!

(More to come.)

[fredseibertdotcom]

Emil Rensing, photographed by Elena Seibert, 2001

My mentor: Emil Rensing 

Emil Rensing changed my life. I’ve been lucky that as I’ve gotten older instead of completely settling in (though there’s naturally a lot of that too) there are folks around me that kept me from thinking “old.” Scott Webb and the Nickelodeon promo team, the Fred/Alan gang, the great artists and writers in my cartoon lives. But, I must say, I think when the consumer internet came buzzing, I was just about ready to turn off my brain to it and let the yung’uns take over. Jed Simmons tried to stop me, but I was tired, I was done. Then came Emil. 

For many years, like everyone else, my mentors had been older me (excepting Bob Pittman, my original MTV boss, who was two years younger). But when I was almost 50, it flipped on me. And the first kid that started teaching me a lot of stuff was... Emil Rensing. 

Emil has a number of super powers, not the least being a superior, raw intelligence. He’s a computer engineer, sure (he was one of the early employees of the then-revolutionary AOL), but... My experience has been there are engineers who know how to invent things, build things, fix things, but there are few who understand the human who use those things. On the other hand, the folks who can comprehend humans, don’t often have grasp on where technology is going, they can only figure out where it’s been (I’m probably on that spectrum). Emil, he can connect the dots. It’s seems simple when I’m writing this, but trust me it’s not. Emil appreciates, deduces, discerns, interprets, recognizes, penetrates. Emil sees. 

Emil and I met in 1999, but here’s the quick backstory. 

After a try at becoming a record producer, a stint in country radio and cable television, I had somehow or other found myself happily, thrillingly, in the cartoon business. Then, a few months after insisting to a friend that I was happy just learning to be an independent cartoon producer, the internet was for others, I became the first/only president of MTV Networks Online. Just like any other occupation I’ve had, I had no idea what I was doing. 

A friend from the animation biz, Charlie Fink, someone always interested in ‘what’s next,’ had left Hollywood and joined the early, money losing, what-the-fuck-is-this-internet-thing. He suggested I meet a young engineer –Signore Rensing– he’d worked with. I did, and even though –maybe because!– Emil was 25 years younger, I asked him to join my team, he did. 

It’s hard for me to say what happened in the next year, but for me, it was confusing. The company didn’t really want to succeed in the internet, they just wanted some of that internet moolah that was floating around, and I still didn’t know what I was doing other than occupying space. Soon enough, it was clear to me I couldn’t move the company in any useful direction, so it was equally clear I had to quit. When I told Emil I was leaving he announced he’d quit earlier that day. 

Frederator/NY announcement posters by Hatch Show Print, Nashville

Spontaneously, I blurted, “let’s start a company together. You keep showing me what the internet will mean to me and I’ll you how to make TV shows.” He agreed and we were in business. Frederator Studios –Eric Homan and Kevin Kolde– kept the cartoon fires burning (My Life as a Teenage Robot, Random! Cartoons, Fanboy and Chum Chum, Adventure Time, et cetera) and we started a media/internet consultancy in New York.  The details don’t matter, we did some good work, we made some TV shows, we started some of the early internet video successes, eventually we started, then sold, yet another new company that paced the world in the new vision of streaming video. 

Next New Networks, founded by Emil Rensing & Fred Seibert, posters by Frank Olinsky

Most importantly, Emil kept me young, kept me smart, helped set my stage for the next 20+ years. Emil Rensing changed my life. 

Thank you buddy. xxoo 

I’ve posted often about my mentors, the people I’ve learned the most from. And I’ve noted how often how many of them beg to differ as to whether or not I should credit them as such. So, I’ve calmed down in my titling. But still…

[fredseibertdotcom]

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 had already produced my favorite Bonnie Raitt LP when somehow or other I bullied my way into his Atlantic Records office, where he was a mentee of the legendary Joel Dorn. Over the next few years, Michael 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.

The first Mosaic Record box set 1983

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. 

[fredseibertdotcom]

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

[fredseibertdotcom]

New Music Distribution Catalog 1986, cover painted by Keith Haring

Working for the New Music Distribution Service New York City 1974-1975

My time working for Carla Bley and Michael Mantler was one of the clear highlights of my early working life. From crashing one of Carla’s earliest recording sessions to working at the New Music Distribution Service to being the sole road crew member for Carla’s first touring bands, there couldn’t have been a better set of experiences for a young, music obsessed, media obsessed young person.

Given that I’d started a record company that recorded some jazz, NMDS was distributing one of our albums, so I would hang at their first office, at the time run by one of my former WKCR-FM mates (KCR was to be a through line for the joint for several years, proven by the 1986 dedication to the late Taylor Storer another radio station alum). When he left, he suggested I might be a replacement, and lucky for me, Mike and Carla agreed.

There was nothing, before or after, like NMDS. Initially, it was a desperate, brilliant lifeline for two distinctly unique, non-mainstream composers (non-mainstream for virtually any or every genre; Carla and Mike might have been seemed like they belonged to “jazz,” but their music only tangentially touched upon it, due to many of the musicians they performed/recorded with). Their first two multi-LP albums had a really rough time finding retailers willing to stock them next to rock, even classical and jazz records clogging their racks, so their audacious plan to co-distribute with 10 other misfit labels in Europe (Incus, FMP, ECM, Futura, Virgin, among others) seemed like the only hope. 

By the time I came aboard around 1974, the service had already expanded enough that we were carrying not only independent jazz, but classical, electronic, even the beginning of what could be avant-rock. The Philip Glass Chatham Square Production LPs would be among the most well known, but it was Manfred Eicher’s ECM from Munich which would lead to the most consequential philosophies of the non-profit, and ultimately for Carla’s and Mike’s personal productions.

As I arrived, ECM was already the most popular label we stocked. Everything from their first album (Mal Waldron’s “Free at Last”) were finding airplay, and subsequent sales, but it was the double whammy of Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea that almost literally blew the doors off. They each had solo albums that were taking off, but against the grain of the free jazz 1970s, Chick’s first “Return to Forever” LP, a light, beautiful, bossa nova flavored confection (as opposed to his heavy fusion version that it would morph into) had become, in indie jazz terms, a massive hit. From my first day, enormous amounts of time and energy of the two of us, the only NMDS full time employees, was spent taking orders, boxing them up, invoicing, and getting paid for those records. Too much time, it turned out.

“Stop!” cried Carla.

Because, in addition to ECM, NMDS was also handling tiny, artist produced labels –our raison d’etre, after all– some of which only sold one LP a year. WE were suggesting dropping to low selling items, we could only handle so much with ECM volume just increasing day after day.

Carla then made a decree. She and Mike would call Manfred and tell him it was time he found another, larger distributor (he did, with enough success that 50 years later, ECM still commands major company record distribution). And, we would positively, absolutely not, never, no way, drop any label that sold at least one album a year. NMDS was in the business of supporting artists that no one else would.

“No one would ever take our [Carla’s and Mike’s] records. That’s why we started NMDS to begin with, it’s why we exist!” And, that was that.

Not for nothing, when NMDS folded in 1990, Manfred Eicher, who had for decades proven his loyalty to his artists, proved it once again to his most devoted American based friends. Carla Bley’s entire discography, and Michael Mantler’s life’s work, continues to be distributed worldwide by ECM.

Anyhow, working at NMDS and with Mike and Carla proved to be more than a merely formative experience for me. It gave me a grounding in everything from record production to the record business to, eventually, the media business. I had a great time learning from and working beside two world class artists, and world class people.

.....

As to this particular catalog, one of two visual artists who mean the most to me is Keith Haring. I’ve been on a jag of searching about him lately, and I had completely forgotten that our paths crossed virtually at NMDS.

More importantly, flip through the catalog, and you’ll see proof of what Greg Tate says in his notes: “I tend to think of each year’s New Music Distribution Service catalogue as a kind of musical version of the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, with every entry registering like a report from some far flung orbital station.“

.....

[Transciption of the notes from the 1986 New Music Distribution Catalog]

TAYLOR STORER 1956-1985 This catalog is dedicated in loving memory of Taylor Storer, who was not only a co-worker but a fine friend to all of us and, perhaps more importantly, to the music.

FOREWORDS by Gregory Tate 

Some folk probably just think of the New Music Distribution Service catalogue as this encyclopedic warehouse stocked with mostly independently recorded jazz and contemporary Euro- American classical music. The more savvy perhaps see it as a networking resource for producers, performers and composers of experimental music. 

But for reasons that will probably perplex no one I tend to think of each year’s New Music Distribution Service catalogue as a kind of musical version of the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, with every entry registering like a report from some far flung orbital station. Flipping through its pages can provoke goose pimples of the order of those brought to flesh when Carl Sagan drones on about how many billions upon billions of star systems there are out there and that no, we are not alone.

If you’re a music lover of eclectic and exotic listening habits you’ll find consolation in this catalogue and a kind of communion with others the Master Programmer also gave extrater- restrial ear lobes to. 

For the most part much of the music in the NMDS catalogue defies ready categorization, tending to be defined by the genre rubrics they subvert rather than those they deploy. (It is of course for this reason that the recording of much of this music would only have been under- taken by independent labels run by guerilla-minded entrepreneurs—though the independents who rely on NMDS as an outlet actually function as some of the last spokesmen for free- enterprise late modern capitalism will see.) This is not to say that there’s not also a whole lot of sound contained within that could not be easily filed under such headings as neo-post-bop, maximal minimalism, punk-funk, post-modern opera or even that perennial favorite, classical fusion boogie. What it is to say is that since my own musical tastes run to the polymorphous, most of my choice selections from NMDS catalogues past and present run likewise. Take for example Cecil Taylor’s Garden or really any of his solo recordings where he bridges the gap between Brahms and the blues in but a few lyrical strokes and defies anyone to delimit him to a free-jazz gunslinger type. Or take a listen to Jeffrey Lohn’s “Dirge” a requiem for assassinated South African activist Steve Biko, which is not only of the most aptly horrific pieces of program- matic music ever recorded but one which parodies rock’s roots in African ritual in the same bars it lampoons heavy metals kinship with the music of fascist rallies. 

Taking an opposing tack would be the pan-ethnic confabs of Kip Hanrahan whose directorial flair for making collaborators out of as disparate as those of Cuban Yoruba drummers and Manhattan art-rockers creates a new definition of the term ‘cosmopolitan’. By the same token you will hear in a piece like Daniel Lentz’ “Lascaux” scored for and performed on 24 wine glasses of varying liquid constituency, a playfully minimal evocation of a host of ambient musics old and new, meaning just about everything from Tibetan bells to Brian Eno. 

Even if you never hear more than a fraction of the music available in this catalogue take it for what it is on its own merits: a trans-dimensional road map to the alternative music of the spheres. Not to mention, one of the funniest documents late post-modernism has yet produced. If not a source of sonic salvation as yet untapped by any known evangelical order. Get it while it’s heretical. 

Published by the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Association, Inc. 500 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10012. Telephone (212) 925-2121 

Original cover art by Keith Haring 

INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW MUSIC DISTRIBUTION SERVICE 

The New Music Distribution Service (NMDS) distributes all independently produced recordings of new music, regardless of commercial potential or personal taste. A wealth of new music is being created in the areas of jazz, classical, and rock, as well as outside of any clearly delineated experimental categories. Because of its generally uncommercial nature, this music has had minimal representation in the music industry. Independent record production and distribution may be the only way for musicians to maintain artistic and economic control of their work. In addition to the sale and promotion of their music, we advise musicians and producers about the recording and manufacturing phases of record-making. We deal with everyone equally, regard- less how much or how little the records sell. The music in this catalog is intended to be successful on its own musical merit, rather than on strictly commercial terms. 

The New Music Distribution Service is a division of the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Association, Inc., a not-for-profit organization chartered in New York in 1966. The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra began producing its own JCOA recordings as early as 1968. As an increasing number of musicians and composers in all fields started to explore independent record production, the problem of inadequate distribution became acutely apparent. In order to deal with the need for a distribution outlet for its own records, as well as for all new jazz and new music, the New Music Distribution Service was established in 1972. Initially, 98 records on 17 small labels from. the United States and Europe were handled, with services being exchanged on an international basis. However, during the next few years the unprecedented growth of domestic independent record companies necessitated exclusive concentration on the problem as a national one, and ties with foreign labels were dropped. Now, the demand for service is such that over 2000 records on 360 labels are being distributed. This growth does not appear to be slowing down. It continually becomes more obvious that independent record production is the only way for most of these musicians and composers to issue their music. As the only organization in the field, NMDS continues to provide and improve this vital and unique service to the creators and the audience of new music. 

NMDS sells records to individuals by mail order and to record stores across the country. We regard the mail order portion of our business as the most vital, because this allows you to select what you want from the entire catalog. By doing so you directly support our efforts to keep this creative music available. Our aim is to provide you with a rich variety of music. For those of you to whom this music is totally unfamiliar, we have provided an introduction to NMDS record- ings, which may help you become acquainted with these new sounds. For the record store this catalog represents a strong alternative to the monopolistic practices of the commercial ‘music industry’. These records may give the store the edge that distinguishes it from just another record store. 

The descriptions in this catalog are not intended to be definitive, but rather to guide you. Each of our catalogs is larger and more diverse than the previous one, reflecting the continuing commitment of the music community to independent record production. Beginning with this edition, we have also instituted an attempt, however futile and elusive it may seem, of listing artists by style of music. Because of the inherent problems of trying to categorize them, many of our artists can be found in more than one category. We hope that this will enable you not only to find the composers and musicians you are looking for, but also to discover others working in the same genre. 

As a non-profit organization, we are counting on your support. You can help ensure the survival of creative new music on records not only through your purchases, but also through your tax-deductible contributions. You may now become a Friend of NMDS for $25.00 per year, for which you will automatically receive our quarterly New Release Listings, and we will also ship your orders at our expense. This offer applies only to orders of more than one record shipped in the continental U.S. If you are able to contribute more, you will receive the above privileges, plus a signed copy of Laurie Anderson’s first Single (for $75), or a signed and numbered copy of a boxed three-record set of the John Cage Town Hall 25-Year Retrospective Concert (for $150). 

This catalog has been prepared with significant support and encouragement from the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, and many generous individuals.