This interview is a continuation of a previous article that was published on July 15, 2003. To read the first section click here.

Fred Seibert found working with entrepreneur Ted Turner a liberating experience. Photo credit: Michael Yarish/Nickelodeon.

Joe Strike: When did you decide to leave Hanna-Barbera?

Fred Seibert: First of all, understand that the day I got in there I said to everyone ‘I know nothing about animation,’ and the likelihood that I will ever work in animation again outside the studio is virtually nil. My career has been characterized as having no career. I was like a ping-pong ball in a wind tunnel. Wherever I went where I thought I could do something interesting I did it.

I went to work for an entrepreneur — Ted Turner — who I knew was going to indulge my entrepreneurial impulses. When I went there, the guy who was running the studio at the time asked me, ‘What do you think Ted Turner wants from us?’ I said, ‘I only met him for 20 minutes — I have no idea what he wants us to do. But I read a book about him and I’m going to guess what he wants me to do. I’ll do what my best guess is, and if he doesn’t like it he’ll fire me.’

Ted was a fantastic boss but he was entrepreneurial. He basically approved a budget at the beginning of the year and checked in once a month to see what I was doing. I knew when we merged with Time Warner that was not going to happen anymore. I was not going to be in a company as small as Turner was. Turner was a company run by an entrepreneur, a ‘loony entrepreneur’ — I say that in quotes, and I say that with affection. There was nothing like that at Time Warner.

JS: A much more corporate culture.

FS: It was just a completely different culture, and it was not one that indulged people like me. I knew that my time was up, so I left with the merger.

When I knew I was going to leave, I looked back, which is the only time I really looked back. I realized that for the first time in my career I had actually developed an asset for myself that I could leverage elsewhere: I understood how to develop talent in the animation world and get hits. I’d never really gone into any new venture with that kind of asset.

Seibert challenged producer Larry Huber to make a short, which eventually became ChalkZone. Photo credit: Michael Yarish/Nickelodeon.

When I was still at Hanna-Barbera, someone from Nickelodeon called: ‘How come in the last three years you’ve made 48 shorts and we made five pilots?’ I said ‘I can’t tell you that — I’m the competition.’ When I announced I was leaving, the same person called back, ‘You’re not the competition any more,’ and I said ‘Yeah, but you’re not paying me. It’s a secret.’ He said, ‘Well can we rent the secret?’ I said, ‘Sure,’ and I made a deal as an independent producer of new animation for Nickelodeon.

JS: That’s when Frederator was born?

FS: Yeah. I left Hanna-Barbera in October 1996 and Frederator started January 1997.

JS: You credit people like Larry Huber as having a knack for recognizing and developing talent; it sounds like you share that ability with him.

FS: It’s something I’m interested in. As an independent producer it’s required, because the only reason that companies make deals with producers is that producers know something they don’t. And 99% of the time the thing that producers know and companies don’t is how to root out talent and nurture and develop them into something valuable for the company.

So, aside from the fact that I shared it with those guys, I understood it was a requirement of my new life to know how to do it.