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Listen in stereo, preferably with headphones. Video courtesy of Jeff Rowe and Dennis Degan.

The first MTV sales pitch. February 27, 1981

Business people can be their own worst enemies.

The president of Warner Amex Satellite Company, MTV's parent company, decreed that August 1, 1981 was the launch date of MTV: The Music Channel, and we would not miss the date for anything. All hands on deck. My creative partner (and soon to be business partner) , Alan Goodman and I, needed to make a tape that would convince reluctant cable operators to carry the channel. They wanted The Weather Channel, not some horrible, miscreant, rock'n'rollers on their cable systems. Alan wrote a script, it went "upstairs" and the marketing/sales group had a fit. We'd neglected all the points in the memo they sent us. They insisted –insisted, dammit!– that we include each and every one of their bullet points in the tape.

What a way to kill a pitch.

I was despondent. After a minute, Alan came up with genius solution. We had the announcer read all the points, as written!, and separated them all in extreme stereo. (At the time, it sped by like a freight train; 46 years later, it sounds as fast as a horse and buggy. But, the audience listening, was used to announcers being as fast as mules going uphill.)

"I remember being in the booth thinking 'What do I do?' and I remembered that [a CBS Records exec] was always writing down numbers. I looked around the room to find something with numbers and spotted the time code generator. Somehow I worked it out that the location of the images and videos we were transferring corresponded to the time code. And the rest is history. The first thing in my life I ever produced."

When Andy Setos, our engineering head, placed the PA speakers wwwaaayyy to the left and right of the audience, they were assaulted from all over.

The bullet points would barely be understood, but the idea of MTV's stereo requirement would be thought of as the coolest thing in TV history.

Not for nothing, the cable operators detested the idea of MTV in stereo. "No one has stereo televisions!" "The equipment will cost us $50!" (To be fair, cable television wasn't necessarily a profitable venture at the time. Yet!) Our sales team didn't love anything that the operators resisted.

"You'll never look at music the same way again!"

Well, when the two a half minute tape finished...

The audience of cable operators was up on their feet, cheering and clapping! Lo and behold! Alan's genius idea worked. The first of many more.

...

MTV: The Music Channel: Cable Operator Pitch Tape February 27, 1981

Announcer: Alan Bleviss Editorial: Reeves Teletape, NY Produced by Alan Goodman & Fred Seibert

...

A couple of notes:

Yes, originally, the network was called "The Music Channel." We already had "The Movie Channel," and with a slate of 10 others, only one –Nickelodeon– didn't have the moniker "The [channel name here] Channel." The Shopping Channel, The Games Channel, The Sports Channel, they were all on the roadmap. When "MTV" was added (Music TV, get it?") we even developed some (not good) logos. This tape might the only semi-public use of "The Music Channel."

This 1994 article in Broadcasting+Cable, a trade magazine, is the only one I can think of that covers the entire sweep of my media career. That is, up through the first phase of producing cartoons. But, the writer (unidentified, sorry) touches on my independent record production era, the promotion and branding work at MTV, the branding company Alan Goodman and I started to work with  Nickelodeon and MTV, and then, Hanna-Barbera Cartoons. It’s before the internet age, of course, so no MTV Networks Online, Next New Networks or Frederator Networks.

Thanks go to Hanna-Barbera’s head of public relations, Richard Lewis, who thought Fifth Estate could be suckered into profiling a polymath.

Broadcasting + Cable Magazine June 27, 1994

Fifth Estater: Fred Seibert

Fred Seibert's rise from cutting jazz albums on the cheap to the presidency of children's television powerhouse Hanna-Barbera Inc. is evi­dence that guts and a willingness to challenge assumptions can pay off. 

But Seibert faces a challenge large enough for even his high standards: returning once-dominant cartoon fac­tory Hanna-Barbera to its former glory under new owner Turner Broadcasting Systems. 

A musical background (piano, flute and accordion) and the lure of free records led Seibert, a student at Columbia University to join the campus radio station, WKCR-FM, in 1969. Seibert spent the next four years as disk jockey, writer, producer and work­ing "nearly every other job" at the sta­tion. Then Seibert set up his own jazz and blues label, Oblivion Records, out of the station's back office. 

Finding the label more interesting than his history and chemistry studies, he left Columbia before graduating and devoted his energies to producing records. 

However, Seibert acts such as Mis­sissippi Fred McDowell, Cecil Taylor and Hank Jones (who was nominated for a Grammy for one Seibert-pro­duced album) never hit a chord with the masses. Seibert served as a tour and sound manager with a jazz orchestra to support himself. 

Fortunately for an impoverished Seibert, a guardian angel intervened. Dale Pon, vice president of creative services, Storer Radio group, was pleased with Seibert's work as a free­lance radio engineer and persuaded him to join the company in 1978 as a promotion assistant, first in Los Ange­les and then back in New York. 

Two years later, in 1980, Pon recom­mended Seibert for the position of pro­motion manager with the nascent Movie Channel premium cable service, then owned by American Express and Warner Communications.

A year later, when The Movie Chan­nel launched a novel music cable chan­nel called MTV, Seibert found himself in the catbird seat as the only Movie Channel executive with a music back­ground. 

Once appointed to head MTV's on-­air promotion effort, Seibert quickly realized the revolutionary potential of the channel and led a group that rewrote the rules of television promotion. Rather than promoting individual shows, Seibert and his team worked to establish the identity of the channel with such devices as the no-famous rotating “M” logo.

"Fred had taste,'' says his former boss, Bob Pittman, who was vice president of programming at The Movie Channel and now chairman of Time Warner’s Six Flags Magic Mountain theme park division. “He was on the cut-ting edge of where things were before we got there. He went against conventional wisdom… That was important because we had no money: originality was all we had.” 

President, Hanna-Barbera, Inc., Los Angeles; born September 15, 1951, New York; attended Columbia University, New York; producer/disc jockey/writer, WKCR-FM, New York 1969-73; self-employed record producer and tour manager, 1973-78; advertising and promotion assistant, later manager, Storer Radio, Los Angeles, New York, 1978-80; promotion manager, The Movie Channel, New York, 1980; vice president, promotion and production, Movie Channel and MTV, 1981-83; co-owner, Fred/Alan, Inc., New York, 1983-92; current position since February 1992. 

Then, in 1983, as vice president of creative services for Warner-Amex, now MTV Networks– Seibert abruptly quit after finding his job increasingly support oriented and less entrepreneurial. He also was disappointed that he had not been rewarded for his role in launching the rapidly expanding music channel.

Seibert and MTV creative director Alan Goodman –now Seibert’s brother-in-law– formed Fred/Alan, a programming and marketing consulting firm for radio, television and cable.

After MTV's wrath at the pair's departure subsided, Seibert and Good­man designed a promotional campaign that helped fledgling children's net­work Nickelodeon, owned by MTV, move from dead last among cable net­works to first place in six months, again by stressing network identity over individual programs. The pair also helped create and promote the Nick at Nite sitcom block.

Finding that the success of the agency was forcing them into more mundane activities, the partners decid­ed to dissolve the business in February 1992. A day after leaving, Turner Entertainment President Scott Sassa called and offered Seibert the presidency of Turner's recently acquired Hanna-Barbera studio.

Now, Seibert is stoking the creative engines at the company. The studio is implementing a six-year plan to promote a different group of its classic characters each year, beginning with The Flintstones this year.

Next year it will be '60s series The Adventures of Jonny Quest. Efforts include producing a live-action feature film based on the series, a two-hour animated movie for Turner Network Television and a new animated Jonny Quest show for syndication in fall 1996. The division also will begin regular production of animated feature films. 

The company also has stepped up production of syndicated projects by launching weekly this season, 2 Stupid Dogs and SWAT Kats, both distributed by Turner Program Services.

 Fearless. Three stories. 

Bob Pittman was my boss (I wrote about Bob as one of my mentors here), the one who gave me a lifetime career in television, when I was positive I was going to be a record producer. Like great bosses can sometimes do, he drove me nuts on more than one occasion (God knows how many times I annoyed him!), but more often than not gave me the rope to hang myself (thanks Bob!). But over the years I watched him succeed over and over and I finally have had enough distance to see...

...that Bob is fearless. A fearless competitor, fearless leader, fearless mentor, probably a fearless flyer. It’s one of the many qualities of Bob’s that’s brought him from radio and MTV to the heights of media.

I had a first hand look on this numerous times, with Bob as a boss, then a client, and finally as a friend. Here are three stories that not only have stuck with me for the past 40 years but have affected my own behavior, but personal and professional ever since.

1.

Very early on at MTV Networks, we had a management offsite meeting in Montauk. I’m not much of a joiner and not a drinker, but one night I found myself in a packed car of party co-workers; seven folks in a car meant for five. I was stuffed in the back with Bob and someone sprawled across our laps. 

You have to know how isolated Montauk is, and at night there are no streetlights, and here we were barreling through the darkest of roads. Suddenly, Bob leaned forward and put his hands over the driver’s eyes.

“We did this all the time at home in Mississippi. No one ever got hurt!”

I wasn’t so sure his luck was going to hold.

The woman on my lap leaned in close and said, “That’s what I like about Bob. He’s fearless.”

.....

2.

Bob was 25, I was 27, he was my boss as the head programmer at The Movie Channel, a start up, early cable channel owned by Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment (WASEC), a joint venture between two huge corporations, Warner Communications and American Express. Every expense was heavily scrutinized for efficiency and effectiveness, and my first production assistant was brought on as a freelancer only. He was creative, smart and funny, if a little disorganized.

A few months in he up and quit. “I’ve got an eye disease, I’ll be legally blind in a few months. I’m going to go live with my parents and I’ve sold my comics.” He’d been collecting since he was in grade school.

It came out that his vision was kind of like being underwater with eyes open and the degeneration would stop at a certain point. Reading was possible but only with a machine that could take books and papers and blow the type up by several inches. Insurance would pay for it, but he was a freelancer with no coverage.

“Well, I’m not going to let you quit. Your problem isn’t your vision, you’re just a little messy and undisciplined. Let's see what I can do.”

Back in the day, corporate health insurance wasn’t as computerized and organized –or quite as necessary– as it is now and maybe I could pull a weasel move and back date him as an employee for health coverage and get him his machine. I didn’t know Bob all that well, we’d met through my first media mentor, but he seemed like a real corporate type –at least compared to me– and he’d have to clear it.

I held my breath and launched into the PA’s issue.

“It’s simple, backdate his employment, get him insurance.”

The PA stayed, got his gizmo, and legally blind or not went on to become the company’s worldwide creative director for sister channel Nickelodeon.

Bob wasn’t a corporate weasel after all, he was a fearless warrior for his people.

Bob in MTV days, with a frame from Silver Cloud Productions’ “Dot to Dot”

.....

3.

A month into my gig at The Movie Channel, Bob announced The Music Channel and asked me to lead the creative efforts of the channel-to-be. He had a clear vision of a format that would be, exclusively, music videos 24 hours a day, interrupted occasionally by “VJs.”

“So,” I asked Bob, “what else will be in the clock? Jingles, like Top 40 radio?” I hoped not, but I couldn’t really picture anything else.

“No! Are you kidding? NO!!! We’ll do animated logos.” Remember, we didn’t have a name no less a logo.

He could tell I was a little confused. “What?”

“Imagine this.” He was already sounded triumphant. “There’s an animated cow grazing around. All of sudden! An axe comes of of nowhere and cuts off its head. The head falls to the ground, veins spurting blood. The cow vomits! And in the vomit is our logo!!!”

Wow, I thought. Bob will let me do whatever I want!

Bob’s creative fearlessness was the beginning of a change in television that would reverberate for decades.

By the way, we’d never produce the vomiting cow, but...

Click here for my posts about MTV and here for Fred/Alan’s MTV work.

The truth behind the final MTV logo May 1981

“Do you think this will last as long as the CBS eye?”

“No way! We’re a rock channel, we’ll be lucky to even exist in five years.”      –a conversation between the SVP of Marketing and me

“Everyone said we must be nuts,” Seibert recalls, although he’s quick to add that most [of the senior executives] approved the basic MTV look.      –from a 1982 article on the creation of the MTV logo

I’ve told this story in a few interviews, but here’s the complete version. In a 1982 article on the MTV logo creation I was quoted saying that we commissioned the logo and the big bosses approved it. Not really.

I’m not calling out any names, there’s no reason to insult anyone in particular. The times were different, and corporate media is different, in part because of the very existence of MTV. Would this kind of thing happen again today? Absolutely. People’s opinions on how things work are very personal and quirky, and humans are basically conservative (with a small “c”) and we’re all a bit resistant to change.

The truth behind how we got to the final MTV logo is a little more complicated.

The Manhattan Design trio was commissioned in the summer of 1980 to design a logo for our company’s upcoming “The Music Channel.” None of knew much about it other than it would play 24 hours of music videos, a visual equivalent to a pop radio station. Frank, Pat and Patti went right to work, and I must admit that my creative partner Alan Goodman and I really put them through their paces. Neither of us knew all that much about commissioning design and we rejected about 500 ideas before approving the basics of what became the famous trademark for MTV. There’s more detail in the contemporaneous magazine story here.

We knew ahead of time that the sales departments would have a problem with a brand image that would be right for the viewers of a ‘rock’n’roll’ channel. Advertisers, and the salesmen who called on them, are notorious picky and averse to anything that they deemed not for the mainstream. So, we asked Manhattan Design to make a tiny, “elegant” and “classy”, granite black and gray version that would tuck neatly onto a business card. Something that would be comfortable for say, a white shoe, corporate law firm.

Take a look up above. Nothing too wild, right? Well you would’ve thought that I suggested putting a stripper on the card.

“I would never ask my team to show this piece of junk to a client, it would be an insult!” It was a comment we’d hear a lot in the early days, from our advertising agency, from our colleagues, from anyone who thought they knew something about something.

I was immediately sent to his boss.

“Do you think this will last as long as the CBS eye?”

I laughed. All the senior managers at the company had worked at CBS, and their logo was considered the Hope diamond of all corporate trademarks.

“No way,” I said. “We’re a rock channel, we’ll be lucky to even exist in five years.” Wrong answer, and I was sent to the big boss, the executive vice president of the company.

“Who designed this?”

“Three folks behind a tai chi studio in the Village.”

“Why didn’t you use a real designer?”

“We’re a start up, and Manhattan Design only charged us $3000. A ‘real’ designer would ask $10,000 to walk in, and then more.”


The truth is I’d considered Milton Glaser, one of my design heroes, but I was too nervous to even call him. Besides, to be totally honest, I wanted to get a little credit too, and Milton was so famous, he’d get all the limelight. Not Manhattan Design, and certainly not me.

“Here’s $40,000.” Corporations never give you the money you need, but they always have money to “fix it.”

To make a very long story short, I was pissed. We’d worked for a year on this logo, the lead designer was my friend since I was four, and I didn’t want to lose.

I weaseled the whole thing.

I went to the big designers, gave them really bad direction and their results were, shall we say, obviously, sub par. 

The big boss noticed the problems right away and asked to see the originals. He decided the problem was the typeface that spelled out “Music Television” (it was American typewriter, see the third logo down).

Manhattan Design laid out 10 new faces of “Music Television” and the big boss picked the Helvetica version.

“Now it works!” 



We were on the way, with only six weeks until MTV’s public launch.

Freddie, Rich & Al

My last year at Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment Company (or WASEC, the original owner of MTV Networks, MTV and Nickelodeon) was spent running the corporate Creative Services department with my future partner Alan Goodman. It was a job to which I’d been “promoted” after running MTV, and it ended up being the dead end that prompted us to quit and start Fred/Alan, the world’s first agency that specialized in branding media.

All that being said, we had a great, creative year; among other things it was the period where we ran the advertising part of the business and supervised the creation of “I Want My MTV!” And it really took off when Alan suggested we hire one of his companions from CBS Records (now Sony Music, home of Columbia and Epic Records), art director Richard Frankel.  

We had a fun partnership, particularly with Manhattan Design, the original designers of the MTV logo. 

My mentors: Bob Pittman

Writing about Tom Freston earlier has got me reflecting on the great boss we both had who brought us up in the early days of the cable TV business.

An old bio (or Wikipedia entry) of Bob Pittman can fill you in on his media life before he became the key force behind the explosive growth at AOL and as vice chairman of AOL Time Warner. But for me and Tom, MTVN CEO Judy McGrath, John Sykes and a whole bunch of others, Bob was the inspiration that made us work like hell to build, launch, and grow (like weeds) MTV, Nickelodeon, and Nick-at-Nite, which of course led to the explosions of 27 wildly successful cable networks around the world. As John Stewart mentioned to someone earlier today, Bob (and then Tom) built a company that spawned almost every interesting and worthwhile cable executive today (and the worthwhile ones thatdidn’t work there desperately hoped to).

From my perspective, Bob not only is/was smart, shrewd, and a saavy judge of talent, but, he has the best immediate media instincts of anyone I’ve ever met. To this day, if I need a ‘right’ judgement on any media issue, small or huge, I call Bob, ask him a question, and the first thing out of his mouth is right. Every. Single. Time.

As to animation, while I had done a lot before, it was Bob’s notion to do what became the revolutionary 10-second animated network IDs we produced for cable throughout the 80s. He had some wild ideas that were too weird even for MTV, and his vision of what they could be really created an alternative career for me and my partner Alan Goodman.

Click here for my posts about MTV and here for Fred/Alan's MTV work.

Ah, the 80s. 

Within minutes of getting out of the gate, Warner Amex was getting a lot of pressure to license out our logo for swag for the money we could make (it wasn't like advertisers were lining up at the beginning), we were already the hottest thing in pop culture. Our MTV programming boss, Bob Pittman, figured that was the fastest way to spell "fad," which was the last thing anyone wanted. We were in it for the long haul. So, instead, we commissioned Manhattan Design to come up with stuff we'd only give away to our closest friends and allies, and that cable operators could get for contests and giveaways in their local markets.  

The hottest items? The blue t-shirt of course. But, the one most in demand, with the smallest supply was always the satin tour jacket, staple of every band in the 80s. 

By the way, check out the logo on the duffle bag. Like I've mentioned before there were those who were worried no one would understand we were on TELEVISION, so please, make it BIG.    

Click here for my other posts about MTV.

'I Want My MTV' 1-4 1982-1983 from fredseibert on Vimeo.

I WANT MY MTV! took the phenomenon that had taken over the imaginations of young America and supercharged it into a famous brand with just about everyone in the country. I just googled "I Want My MTV" and it popped up almost 4,760,000 results. Pretty amazing for an advertising campaign that ceased to exist 22 years ago.* Pretty potent. The whole thing  was the result of a battle I had to wage at MTV Networks for the better part of two years. Itwas the work of my mentor, friend and highly controversial Dale Pon. He'd been my first boss in the commercial media, at WHN Radio in New York when it was a country music station. He'd recommended me for my job at Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment Company, as the production director of The Movie Channel, and eventually as the first Creative Director of MTV: Music Television. We'd fallen in and out over the years, but in late 1981, when it came time for us to hire an advertising agency again I argued for Dale; instead we hired Ogilvy, a disaster. Our company’s top dog had vetoed Dale because of his disruptive reputation, but with the fig leave that he was not heavy enough for a company like ours, Indeed Dale was a handful, so with a lot of help from my immediate boss Bob Pittman, I was able to convince everyone that Dale understood media promotion better than anyone else in America. Anyone. Besides, didn't he have "insurance" with his partner, legendary adman George Lois?

Dale Pon (via MTV: The Making of a Revolution)

No one had ever encountered an ad executive like Dale, because he had the unique ability to be completely and analytically strategic –”math and magic” Pittman might call it– and be wildly, and intelligently, creative at the same time. An almost unheard of combination, especially in media advertising. Sure, he had a volatile nature, in advertising that was often a given (look at his partner). But it was his strategic, creative abilities that really set him apart. 

We'd already done our first trade campaign, the “Cable Brats," to the discomfort of most of the suits in the corporate marketing group (Bob and his team, me included, were in programming). But Dale didn't buy into the efficacy of trade ads anyhow, so now were onto the big show, television advertising. The only problem was that we all recognized that an effective campaign would cost about $10,000,000. Our budget only had $2,000,000, and if we didn't spend it quickly the corporate gods would probably take it away in the fall.

"I want my Maypo" commercials, created by John Hubley 

Looking back, the core creative ended up being the most straightforward part. Dale's closest friend and creative partner, Nancy Podbielniak had written the cable brats copy and had a tag line "Rock'n'roll wasn't enough for them -- now they want their MTV!" That rung a bell in George Lois, someone who never missed a chance to abscond with someone else's good idea, and decided to rip off his own knock off of a Maypo campaign from the 1950s and 60s (animator John Hubley originated it as a set famous animated spots, and George had unsuccessfully knocked it off using sports stars) and presented a storyboard that completely duplicated his version. Rock stars like Mick Jagger were saying "I Want My MTV" and crying like babies, implying they were spoiled children being denied. No one was buying it until Dale let me know that there was no way he'd ask Pete Townshend or Mick to cry for us. "Pride! They need to show their pride in rock'n'roll! They'll be shouting!" After a little corporate fuss we were able to sell it in.

AMERICA! DEMAND YOUR MTV! 

Now, it was the next part that was completely and utterly brilliant. Because Dale came from the school that great creative was all well and good, but unless it could move the business needle, what good was it? In this case, the needle wasn't ratings (cable TV didn't have ratings in 1981), but active households, distribution for MTV. Cable operators were all relatively old guys who thought The Weather Channel was a better idea; they'd turned a deaf ear to their younger employees who were clamoring for us instead.

To dramatically simplify the strategy Dale organized, he decided to only advertise in markets where:

• There was enough penetration to justify a modest ad spend.

• But where there were critically large cable operators on the fence about taking MTV. 

• And that we could afford a 300 gross rating point buy (three times heavier as any consumer products agency would suggest) for at least four weeks in a row (the traditional media spend would call for pulsing 10 days on and 10 days off).

The "G" in LPG/Pon was Dick Gershon. Along with data from our affiliate group, he crunched and crunched and crunched until he came up with a list of markets and dates we could afford. It was 20% of what we needed, but everyone figured if we could really start to knock off a bunch of cable systems, get them actually launch our network, the domino effect would solidify MTV's hold on the market forever. 

Strategy in place, the creative was back on the front burner. The basic campaign was a great way to get famous rock stars endorsing our channel, but where was the close? What would actually make the 'ka-ching' we needed? Luckily, back in the day there was only one way to for a homeowner get anything from your reluctant jerk of a cable operator (they figure they held all the cards, why should they do anything to make life better for their consumers?). And what was it that young adults loved to do? Dale knew immediately.

No one alive in front of a television set in the summer of 1982 could ever forget

Pete Townshend, with the wackiest haircut of his career, shouting at the video camera:

"America! DEMAND your MTV! Call your cable operator and say, "I WANT MY MTV!!"

The stories of how we got the original rock stars –Mick Jagger and Pete Townshend– to go on camera for free is best left to fellow MTV executives Les Garland and John Sykes. Suffice it say that we sent a camera crew, Dale Pon, my creative partner Alan Goodman, and Les Garland to the Paris hotel where Jagger was staying. Garland knew the Stones from his days at Atlantic Records and we made it his job to convince Jagger that a free commercial was in the Rolling Stones’ interest; when Jagger wouldn’t budge, Les reached into his pocket and gave Mick a $1 bill. Jagger said “I want my MTV!” for the camera. Sykes had never met Pete but camped out in The Who’s management office until Townshend walked out and John asked him to do a “promotional spot,” something artist often did for radio stations. With the slight of hands of Les and John, Mick and Pete in hand, all the other musicians came aboard for the campaign.

We shot the spots wherever the rock stars would have us for 20 minutes (they still weren't really sure this MTV: Music Television thing was going to be good for them). Our director and producer, Tommy Schlamme and Buzz Potamkin, got together with some puppeteers to choreograph the 'dancing' stereo television. I asked Alan to go into the studio to edit the music sections when they weren't rocking enough, and --poof!-- famous advertising.