Sesame Street

Sesame Street is an American children's television series created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett. The program is known for its combination of Jim Henson's Muppets, animation, short films, humor, and cultural references. The program was conceived in 1966 during discussions between Cooney and Morrisett. The series premiered on public television stations on November 10, 1969 to positive reviews, some controversy, and high ratings.

The show has gone through significant changes throughout its history. The format of Sesame Street consisted of a combination of commercial television production elements and educational techniques, and has changed throughout the show's history to reflect the changes in American culture and their audience's viewing habits. It was the first time the producers and writers of a children's television show used educational goals and a curriculum to shape its content. It was also the first time its educational effects on young children were studied, and that both summative and formative research was used to change the show's content.

Shortly after creating Sesame Street, its producers began to develop what came to be called "the CTW model", a system of planning, production, and evaluation, along with a collaboration between the producers, writers, and researchers, that did not fully emerge until the end of its first season. The show was initially funded by government and private foundations, but moved to being more self-supportive by depending upon revenues from licensing arrangements, international sales, and other media for their funding. By 2006, there were independently produced versions, or "co-productions", of Sesame Street in twenty countries. In 2001 there were over 120 million viewers of all international versions of Sesame Street and by the show's 40th anniversary in 2009, they were seen in more than 140 countries.

By its 40th anniversary in 2009, Sesame Street was the fifteenth-highest rated children's television show in the United States. A 1996 survey found that 95% of all American preschoolers had watched the show by the time they were three years old.  In 2008, it was estimated that 77 million Americans had watched the series as children. As of 2009, Sesame Street has won eight Grammy Awards and 118 Emmy Awards—more than any other children's show.

Format

Sesame Street, from its first episode, has structured its format by using "a strong visual style, fast-moving action, humor, and music" as well as animation and live-action short films. When Sesame Street premiered, most researchers assumed that young children did not have long attention spans, so the new show's producers were concerned that an hour-long show would not hold their audience's attention. At first, the show's "street scenes", which referred to the action taking place on its set, consisted of a typical inner-city street, were not story-based. Instead, they consisted of individual segments connected to the curriculum and interrupted by "inserts", or puppet skits, short films, and animations; this structure allowed the producers to use a mixture of styles, paces, and characters. By season 20, research had shown that children were able to follow a story, so the street scenes, interspersed with shorter segments, were changed to depict storylines.

"We basically deconstructed the show. It's not a magazine format anymore. It's more like the 'Sesame' hour. Children will be able to navigate through it easier."

Executive producer Arlene Sherman, speaking of the show's restructuring in 2002.

The producers decided, by recommendation of child psychologists, that the show's human actors and Muppets would not interact because they were concerned it would confuse and mislead young children. When the CTW tested the appeal of the new show, they found that although children paid attention to the shows during the Muppet segments, their interest was lost during the "Street" segments. The producers went back and re-shot the Street segments; Henson and his team created Muppets such as Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, that could interact with the human actors. Sesame Street's format remained intact until the show's later decades, when their audience changed. Its producers responded to these changes by moving to a more narrative format, beginning in 1998 with the creation of the popular segment, "Elmo's World", a fifteen-minute long segment hosted by the Muppet Elmo.

Educational goals

As author Malcolm Gladwell has stated, "Sesame Street was built around a single, breakthrough insight: that if you can hold the attention of children, you can educate them". Gerald S. Lesser, the CTW's first advisory board chair, went even further and stated that the effective use of television as an educational tool, in addition to catching and focusing children's attention, needed to sustain it. Sesame Street was the first children's show that structured each episode and made, as Gladwell put it, "small but critical adjustments" to each segment to capture children's attention. According to CTW researchers Rosemarie Truglio and Shalom Fisch, Sesame Street was one of the few children's television programs that utilized a detailed and comprehensive educational curriculum, garnered from formative and summative research, in its content.

Sesame Street had both cognitive and affective goals. Initially, its producers and researchers focused on cognitive goals, while addressing affective goals indirectly, because they believed that focusing on cognitive goals would increase children's self-esteem and feelings of competency. One of their initial and primary goals was preparing young children for school, especially children from low-income families. The show's producers used modeling, repetition,and humor to fulfill their goals. They made changes in the show's content to increase their viewers' attention and to increase its appeal. They encouraged "co-viewing" to entice older children and parents to watch the show by including humor, cultural references, and celebrities.

After Sesame Street's first season, its critics forced its producers and researchers to address affective goals more overtly. The affective goals they addressed were social competence, tolerance of diversity, and nonaggressive ways of resolving conflict, which was depicted through interpersonal disputes among its residents. In the 1980s, the show used the real-life experiences of the show's cast and crew, such as the death of Will Lee (Mr. Hooper) and the pregnancy of Sonia Manzano (Maria) to address affective concerns. In later seasons, Sesame Street addressed real-life disasters such as the September 11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina.

The show's goals for outreach were addressed through a series of programs that first focused on promotion, and then after the first season, on the development of educational materials used in preschool settings. Innovative programs were developed because their target audience, children and their families in low-income, inner-city homes, did not traditionally watch educational programs on television and because traditional methods of promotion and advertising were not effective with these groups.

Funding

As a result of Cooney's initial proposal in 1968, the Carnegie Institute awarded her an $8 million ($48 million in 2011 dollars) grant to create a new children's television program and establish the Children’s Television Workshop (CTW), renamed in 2000 to the Sesame Workshop (SW). Cooney and Morrisett procured additional multi-million-dollar grants from the US federal government, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Ford Foundation. Davis reported that Cooney and Morrisett decided that if they did not procure full funding from the beginning, they would drop the idea of producing the show. As Lesser reported, funds gained from a combination of government agencies and private foundations protected them from the economic pressures experienced by commercial networks, but caused challenges in procuring future funding.

After Sesame Street's initial success, its producers began to think about its survival beyond its development and first season and decided to explore other funding sources. From the first season, they understood that the source of their funding, which they considered "seed" money, would need to be replaced. The 1970s were marked by conflicts between the CTW and the federal government; in 1978, the U.S. Department of Education refused to deliver a $2 million check until the last day of CTW's fiscal year. As a result, the CTW decided to depend upon licensing arrangements with toy companies and other manufacturers, publishing, and international sales for their funding.

In 1998, the CTW accepted corporate sponsorship to raise funds for Sesame Street and other projects. For the first time, they aired short ads of indoor playground manufacturer Discovery Zone, their first corporate sponsor, to air before and after each episode. Consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who had previously appeared on Sesame Street, called for a boycott of the show, saying that the CTW was "exploiting impressionable children".