Fred Seibert: The right man at the right time in animation.

If one man can be credited with resuscitating American commercial animation from its near-death experience in the '80s and '90s, the credit would have to go to Fred Seibert.

After putting the then-new MTV on the map with a series of unforgettable, no-two-alike animated ID spots, he took over the creatively exhausted Hanna-Barbera studio and engineered a turnaround that brought some of the country’s most innovative young animators to its doors. Their creations helped make another newborn cable network more than a place where old cartoons went to die. Moving onto an association with Nickelodeon, Fred proved his success was no fluke by midwifing a second batch of groundbreaking, creator-driven cartoons that helped cement Nick’s dominance of the children’s television market.

Fred will often praise an associate or collaborator as being "an awesome judge of talent" — a description he more than deserves himself. With an eye toward the main chance that others have overlooked, and an instinctive understanding of both the creative and commercial potential of animated cartoons, Fred has a knack for making himself the right man at the right time. In late March and early April 2003, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Fred Seibert in his Fifth Avenue office where he heads Frederator, the animation company he started in 1997. I discovered that he is not shy about taking — or sharing — credit for his successes, or accepting blame for his failures; I also learned why he prefers "cartoons" over "animation."

Joe Strike: I’ve read a lot about you already, but can you give me the 10-cent recap how it all began?

Fred Seibert: Sure. I started in the media business in college radio at Columbia University. I went from there to becoming an independent record producer, making primarily jazz and blues records.

That got into me into commercial radio, into WHN here in New York, which was then a country music station. I did advertising and promotion; that was my introduction to that part of the world.

I was introduced to [MTV founder] Bob Pittman by my mentor, Dale Pon, who had been working with Bob in radio. One day I got a phone call, “Hi, I’m Bob Pittman, program director of [New York pop music radio station] WNBC, and we’re going to make you rich.” By the way, Dale came up with the ‘I Want my MTV’ slogan for me when I hired him after I didn’t work for him anymore.

Huckleberry Hound, The Flintstones and Bugs Bunny are among Fred's favorite all-time animated characters. Left to right: © Hanna-Barbera; ™ & © 2001 Cartoon Network. An AOL Time Warner Company. All rights reserved; © AOL Time Warn

I basically developed a career as "the branding guy" in cable television, primarily at MTV networks. My then-partner, Alan Goodman, and I introduced the whole notion of branding to cable television through our company Fred/Alan. We helped clients like Nickelodeon develop unique personalities that people could connect with emotionally. Nowadays it’s a given, but back then branding was a new idea in TV promotion.

I don’t do branding anymore; once other people started talking about branding I was onto something else. We actually introduced the word ‘branding’ into the television lexicon. We did that until 1992, when we both decided we had had enough already of being in the service business.