Sesame Street

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Sesame Street premiered on the 10th of November 1969, and within a decade, nine million American children under the age of six were watching it every single day. That number speaks to something more than popularity. It points to a question that two people first asked each other in 1966: could television, with all its power to capture attention, be turned toward something genuinely useful for children? Joan Ganz Cooney, a television producer, and Lloyd Morrisett, a vice president at the Carnegie Foundation, decided to find out. What followed was not simply a TV show. It was an experiment, a funding battle, a cultural controversy, and eventually an institution that would be watched by more than 190 million children across 70 languages. How did a program aimed at low-income preschoolers become the most widely viewed children's television show in the world? And what did it cost to keep it there?

• 2. The Idea Behind the Street

  ›

  Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett began their conversations in 1966 with a clear target audience: young children from low-income families who were arriving at school already behind. Their goal, as Cooney stated it, was to "master the addictive qualities of television and do something good with them." After two years of research, the newly formed Children's Television Workshop received a combined grant of eight million US dollars from the Carnegie Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the US federal government. The name Sesame Street came from the saying "open sesame," conjuring a place where exciting things happen. The show was announced at a press conference on the 6th of May 1969, and given an initial six-month run to prove itself. Canadian author Malcolm Gladwell later identified the show's founding insight: that holding children's attention and educating them are not separate problems. Gerald S. Lesser, the CTW's first advisory board chair, put it in even sharper terms, saying that effective educational television needed to capture, focus, and sustain attention all at once. The producers built every structural choice around that principle from the very first episode.

• 3. The CTW Model

  ›

  Producer Joan Ganz Cooney once said, "Without research, there would be no Sesame Street." In 1967, combining research with television production was, by her own account, "positively heretical." The system that emerged became known as the CTW Model, and it had four components: receptive television producers working alongside child science experts; a specific, age-appropriate curriculum; research that directly shaped production; and independent measurement of what viewers actually learned. Harvard professor Gerald S. Lesser designed the show's educational objectives, while Harvard professor Edward L. Palmer conducted formative research and bridged the gap between producers and researchers. The Educational Testing Service conducted independent summative evaluations during the first two seasons. Cooney described the collaboration between researchers and producers as "an arranged marriage." Each season, a curriculum sheet was distributed outlining goals and priorities. Writers then met to discuss story arcs and received an assignment sheet specifying how much airtime to devote to each topic. Scripts were analyzed by the research team before production. The writers were present during taping, which for the first twenty-four years took place in Manhattan, and after 1992 at the Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, so they could make last-minute revisions.

• 4. Muppets, Cast, and Characters

  ›

  Jim Henson joined Sesame Street after meeting Joan Ganz Cooney at a curriculum planning seminar in Boston. He was initially reluctant, but he agreed to waive his performance fee in exchange for full ownership of the Sesame Street Muppets and a split of any revenue they generated with the CTW. Jon Stone, the show's director who had worked with Henson previously, reportedly felt that if Henson could not be brought on board, the show should "make do without puppets." Early research changed everything. Children paid close attention during the Muppet segments and lost interest during the Street scenes without them. The producers asked Henson to create Muppets like Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch who would interact directly with human actors, and the Street scenes were re-shot. The research team concluded that Muppets worked as teaching tools because children easily recognized them, found them predictable, and they appealed to adults and older siblings simultaneously. Stone was also responsible for casting the show's human actors. He did not hold auditions until spring 1969, a few weeks before the five test shows were due to be filmed. Children's reactions to the audition recordings were tested in the field by Ed Palmer. Loretta Long was chosen to play Susan after children watching her audition stood up and sang along with her rendition of "I'm a Little Teapot." Stone called casting the only part of the process that was "just completely haphazard."

• 5. Funding Battles

  ›

  The CTW's initial eight-million-dollar grant was always understood as seed money. From the first season, the producers knew that source would need to be replaced. The 1970s brought open conflict with the federal government: in 1978, the US Department of Education refused to deliver a two-million-dollar check until the last day of the CTW's fiscal year. In 1981, the federal government withdrew its funding entirely, pushing CTW to expand into magazine publishing, book royalties, product licensing, and foreign broadcast income. By 2004, over 68% of Sesame Street's revenue came from licenses and products. The Sesame Street Muppets alone were generating between fifteen and seventeen million dollars per year in licensing and merchandising fees by 2008, split between Sesame Workshop and the Jim Henson Company. In 1998, the CTW accepted corporate sponsorship for the first time, allowing brief advertisements by indoor playground manufacturer Discovery Zone to air before and after episodes. Consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who had previously appeared on the show, called for a boycott, saying the CTW was "exploiting impressionable children." By 2015, the financial pressure had grown severe enough that Sesame Workshop struck a deal with HBO to air first-run episodes on the premium cable service. Steve Youngwood, Sesame Workshop's Chief Operating Officer, called it "one of the toughest decisions we ever made." Critics argued the move favored privileged children over the low-income families the show had originally been built to serve.

• 6. Controversy and Cultural Pressure

  ›

  In May 1970, the state commission in Mississippi voted to not air Sesame Street, citing the show's "highly racially integrated cast of children," which commission members felt the state was not yet ready for. Henson himself was from Mississippi. That rejection was one of the most explicit reactions to a show that had always presented a functioning, multicultural community as its setting. Criticism also came from within the educational establishment. Social scientist and Head Start founder Urie Bronfenbrenner found the show too wholesome. Psychologist Leon Eisenberg called its urban setting "superficial," arguing it had little to do with the real problems facing inner-city children. Head Start director Edward Zigler was, by most accounts, the show's most vocal early critic. The CTW also faced pressure from Latino groups and feminist organizations who objected to the show's depictions of Latinos and women. The CTW responded by hiring Hispanic actors, production staff, and researchers by 1971. By the mid-1970s, the show included Chicano and Puerto Rican cast members, films about Mexican holidays and foods, and cartoons teaching Spanish words. The development of stronger female Muppet characters came more slowly, and according to historian Robert W. Morrow, change in how women and girls were depicted occurred gradually as more female Muppet performers like Fran Brill, Camille Bonora, Pam Arciero, Carmen Osbahr, Stephanie D'Abruzzo, Jennifer Barnhart, and Leslie Carrara-Rudolph were hired and trained. Rosita arrived in 1991, and Abby Cadabby in 2006.

• 7. A Shifting Format

  ›

  When Sesame Street launched, most researchers believed young children could not sustain attention through a full hour of television. The original format kept Street scenes short and character-driven, breaking them up with Muppet sketches, animated shorts, and films. That structure lasted roughly until season 20, when research showed that children could, in fact, follow an evolving story. The Street scenes became more narrative-driven. In 1998, a 15-minute segment hosted by the Muppet Elmo, called Elmo's World, was added. Starting in 2014, during the show's 45th season, a half-hour version was introduced to complement the full-hour format, broadcast on weekday afternoons and streamed online. By 2017, the full-hour version was retired across all platforms, with the half-hour version focusing on fewer characters, reduced pop culture references, and a single backbone topic per episode. In October 2023, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Sesame Street would again be reimagined, dropping the half-hour magazine format in favor of a longer, narrative-driven style with more live-action Muppet characters. Season 56, premiering on the 10th of November 2025, on both Netflix and PBS simultaneously, introduced that new format alongside a new animated series called Tales from 123.

• 8. Scale and Legacy

  ›

  By its 50th anniversary in 2019, Sesame Street had produced over 4,500 episodes, two theatrical films, 35 TV specials, 200 home videos, and 180 albums. A 1996 survey found that 95% of all American preschoolers had watched the show by age three. In 2018, it was estimated that 86 million Americans had watched it as children. As of 2022, the show had won 222 Emmy Awards and 11 Grammy Awards, more than any other children's program in history. By 2019, 190 million children were viewing over 160 versions of the show in 70 languages. The Educational Testing Service's summative evaluations from 1970 and 1971 demonstrated measurable educational impact and have been cited in subsequent studies of television's effects on children. Angela Santomero, one of the producers of Blue's Clues, the first children's educational program to apply the CTW Model after the mid-1990s, said: "We wanted to learn from Sesame Street and take it one step further." In 2019, the series was chosen for preservation in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting by the Library of Congress, and Sesame Workshop received Peabody's Institutional Award. In January 2026, the first 100 episodes of the series were uploaded to YouTube, beginning what the show's distribution partners described as the largest collection of older library episodes ever hosted on the platform.