Channel Frederator is one of the best podcasts. For quality content it rules supreme, and little wonder considering it's brought to you by the same folks that put MTV on the map. But this is no music show - this is cartoons at their very best.  Channel Frederator brings you 4 quality cartoons in one groovy package. There are nine episodes to date, read on to see why we think this is one collection where you'll want to have them all!

When researching for this guide, I was treated to some extremely interesting reading, mostly about Channel Frederator's founder Fred Seibert. Although the Frederator podcast in its simplest terms is a collection of cartoons, I think it pays off to know a little about where this podcast comes from, and to appreciate the man behind the machine.

Fred Seibert

You can read Fred's bio in his own words here, but here's a summary for those of you eager to move on and dive into the cartoons.

• 1981 - Director of promotions at The Movie Channel
• 1992 - President of Hanna-Barbera
• Named one of eight "leaders of the new media" by Adweek magazine
• ASIFA, and CLIO awards for MTV Logo work
• 1985 - Oversaw the relaunch of Nickelodeon (taking Nickelodeon from worst to first in cable ratings in one year)
• 1991 - Relaunched MTV's sister channel, VH-1 dubbing it The Greatest Hits of Music Video turning a profit for the first time in VH-1 history.

Animation World Magazine have a superb interview with Fred Seibert for anyone looking to read more about this particular success story.

Frederator

A cartoon studio since 1998 Frederator have close links with Nickelodeon and 4 cartoon series currently airing. Google will return a feast of information on Frederator, but a good starting point is their own links page that will take you to some great information and media such as their own Deviant Art gallery, their blogs, free downloads, and press releases.

Channel Frederator This is where we need to go to get Frederator media onto our PSPs, Channel Frederator. From that webpage you'll be able to download or view online each of the 9 episodes currently available. This month they released a special edition called Top 5 of '05, featuring the viewers most popular episodes from the entire year. While Channel Frederator picks the content for each episode, it's the viewers who tailer the content on a month to month basis by voting for and rating each of the cartoons they have viewed. In this manner each show should in theory become filled with more and more popular content, and it certainly seems to be working. Each show is approximately 60Mb in size and runs for up to 20 minutes. Each cartoon is usually separated by a mini feature like recordings of phone calls made to to Frederator. If you have Sony's Media Manager subscribe to the feed using this RSS link, and each show will be rendered in colourful and sharp AVC format.

Enjoy Channel Frederator, we do!