Fred Seibert

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fred Seibert, as seen on Channel Frederator.

Fred Seibert (born 1951) is a television and movie producer, and an entertainment executive who has held leading positions with MTV Networks and Hanna-Barbera.

Seibert was MTV's first creative director and helped develop its on-air visual identity, creating hundreds of station IDs for the channel. He also commissioned and approved the mutating MTV logo, despite network executives objections to a logo that did not remain constant.

In 1985, with partner Alan Goodman, Seibert successfully overhauled then-floundering children's cable channel Nickelodeon and developed the Nick at Nite concept. He also helped start the Nicktoons project.

Seibert became president of Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc., in 1992, and turned around the struggling animation studio by revamping its production and development process. He created Cartoon Network's What-A-Cartoon!, a showcase for new animated shorts which spun off several successful series including Cow and Chicken, Dexter's Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, and The Powerpuff Girls. He remained at Hanna-Barbera until 1996, when H-B's parent company, Turner Broadcasting, merged with Time Warner. Among Seibert's outputs at Hanna Barbera Productions were SWAT Kats, 2 Stupid Dogs, and Jonny Quest Real Adventures, which was on preproduction for about 3 years.

Seibert co-founded animation production company Frederator Studios in 1997. Frederator currently has an exclusive deal with Nickelodeon, and its productions include ChalkZone, The Fairly OddParents, My Life as a Teenage Robot, Nicktoons Film Festival, and Oh Yeah! Cartoons.

In addition to his Frederator duties, Seibert returned to MTV Networks in 1999, and was president of MTV Networks Online, chairman of the MTVi Group, and president of Nickelodeon Online. After the dot-com bubble burst, he returned to Frederator full-time in 2001. Frederator Studios has grown to be one of the largest independent cartoon producers in America.

In November 2005 Seibert launched his innovative network for distribution on portable video devices, the world's first cartoon video podcast (or vodcast), which he calls Channel Frederator. Filmmakers submit animated films for weekly exhibition on Apple's video iPods, Sony's PlayStation Portables, or Archos Pocket Video Players. In quick succession was 'The Wubbcast' for pre-schoolers (with Bolder Media, in January 2006) and 'ReFrederator' with vintage cartoons (April 2006). Along with their affiliated 'VODcars', the Frederator podcasts are collectively the most distributed in the world.

In February 2006, Fred Seibert's first book (co-edited with Eric Homan) Original Cartoons: the Frederator Studios Postcards 1998-2005 was published by the Easton Studio Press.