Fred Speaks

Adventure Time won a Peabody last week. Fred Seibert launched the show a hundred episodes ago, and the award tells us something about Fred Seibert and his philosophy of shepherding cartoon creators.

Fred relates that he has no creative ideas himself, but he recognizes the talent (ideas?) in others.

... "Great cartoons are funny, short, and they have great characters. I'm less interested in the story than the characters." ...

Mr. Siebert's business model fur nurturing cartoon pitches into shorts and then full-blown series has been effective. He thinks that cartoon executives need to find new creative voices, then get out of the way and let them speak.

One of the things I find most amusing/enlightening (choose one) is that Adventure Time, the hit Cartoon Network show, started life as a Nickelodeon project, and Nick execs turned it down as a series, and gave it back to Fred Seibert to shop elsewhere.

Which he did. And Cartoon Network picked it up. And this explains* why those Nick execs no longer work for Nick.



* Okay, partially explains. There was also the issue of falling ratings and Cartoon Network and the Disney Channel eating their lunch.