Fred Seibert
Fred Seibert
Frederick "Fred" Seibertis a serial entrepreneur and American television and film producer. He owns Frederator Networks, Inc. and Frederator Studios. Seibert has held leading positions with MTV Networks, Hanna-Barbera, and Next New Networks, and is an angel investor in several technology and media start-ups. He has produced live action and animated programs for cable television, and the internet, and began his professional career as a jazz and blues record producer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth15 September 1951
CountryUnited States of America
I really like dating stories, like in Betty and Veronica comics; I like David Lynch and H.P. Lovecraft for the dark gut-wrenching stuff, and I'm inspired by Miyazaki's films for the subtle heart-warming moments, as well as the moments that blew up my imagination.
I come from a time when pop music was the coin of the cultural realm and in a certain way was the only coin of the realm; movies didn't matter as much, and not TV - it was all about pop music. In the era when I started - which was the early '60s - it was all about singles leading to albums.
My background is that I've spent a lot of time marketing entertainment. One of the old saws in package goods is you can take something that is popular and you can make it more popular. But if you take something less popular, you can't automatically market it into the same success as something that's already popular.
The early seasons of 'The Simpsons' had a great deal of heart. That's what I'm trying to pull from, the kind of stuff that goes straight to kids' hearts. When they're watching, they don't necessarily know why they love something.
Up until the time Turner Broadcasting bought Hanna-Barbera, it was essentially an independent studio whose planning cycle had to be nine months. You got a pickup in January, and you put it on the air in September. That's been the cycle.
Everything about 'Adventure Time' is the purest form of kid's play. A kid does not live in the Land of Ooo. That is one of the wonderful things about the show; it doesn't pretend to be real. That was the great thing about 'Pee Wee's Playhouse'; it existed in a world completely outside any reality a kid recognized.