HBO deal turns ‘Sesame Street’ into a toll road
But don’t cry for Rosita; show still to air on WTTW
Phil Rosenthal - Chicago Tribune
The old musical question “Can you tell me how to get, how to get to
Sesame Street?” has a new answer as of this weekend. Sort of.
Some will get there the usual way. Others who pay more will reach it
faster, like springing for a cab or Uber ride, as the PBS mainstay
launches its 46th season on pay cable’s HBO rather than over-the-air
free television.
Those waiting for it on broadcast outlets like WTTW-Ch. 11 won’t see
the new stuff for nine months or so.
The program also has been reduced from an hour to a half-hour, a
step producers have phased in with the reruns, deciding today’s
youngsters begin losing interest after that.
Why HBO? Because Big Bird, Elmo, Cookie Monster and everyone else on
“Sesame Street” were at risk of ending up on the street. Why else?
There has been some hand-wringing over the concept of privilege
being introduced even tangentially to one of the most steadfastly
egalitarian (albeit fictional) blocks in America. A form of
gentrification has come to the old neighborhood. A new kind of subsidy
supports the residents and their infrastructure.
But the important thing is not who gets “Sesame Street” first. It’s
that they continue to get it at all.
Sesame Workshop, the outfit behind “Sesame Street” that used to be
known as the Children’s Television Workshop, saw operating revenue
decline $10.1 million in fiscal 2015 from a year earlier. Between 2015
and 2013, it fell $27 million.
Once-dependable sources of cash have been drying up with
international licensing revenue down by almost 50 percent from 2008 to
2014, while U.S. DVD sales plunged 70 percent.
Add to that ever-greater pressure on all public broadcasting
entities to find new, reliable funding less vulnerable to politics,
corporate mergers and overall belt-tightening.
HBO’s five-year lifeline of an undisclosed amount of cash in
exchange for these “Sesame Street” episodes, access to some of the
Workshop’s archives and other considerations offered welcome relief.
The nine-month wait has little downside. It’s not exactly packed
with spoilers. Unlike jerks who already saw the final season of “Downton
Abbey,” which has run in England, and can’t shut up, a preschooler isn’t
likely to tease: “You won’t believe what comes after R.”
Shows of the same vintage are interchangeable, but “Sesame Street”
has changed a great deal.
To be plucked from the program’s November 1969 launch and deposited
into its HBO iteration — in which Oscar is as much at home in a
recycling or compost bin as a trash can
— would be more than a little disorienting.
It’s said that a viewer’s favorite era of NBC’s “Saturday Night
Live” tends to be the first one he or she watched of the program, now in
its 41st season.
Similarly, the “Sesame Street” you first watched is probably the one
you prefer, not that anyone is likely to be a regular viewer for long if
not involved in child care. The rest may seem foreign.
So much has changed that original episodes now are branded “old
school” and peddled with a warning that they are “intended for
grown-ups” only, as they may not be considered appropriate for
preschoolers today.
That may sound silly, but it’s not necessarily wrong despite the
program’s well-earned standing as a progressive groundbreaker for media,
education and society.
The first episode began with grown-up Gordon walking hand-in-hand
with a little girl he’s apparently just met to introduce her around to
everyone, including wife, Susan, who invites her to their home for milk
and cookies. Stranger danger, anyone?
An originally orange Oscar the Grouch was more malevolent than
grouchy. It was a simpler time, when kids didn’t wear helmets when they
rode bikes and it wasn’t unusual to see racial and ethnic stereotypes in
characters and bits.
It’s jarring to revisit Roosevelt Franklin (a Muppet dropped a few
seasons in) and the rowdy students at “our alma mama, Roosevelt Franklin
Elementary School.” Then there’s Kermit the Frog berating Cookie Monster
until he cried in a lesson about feelings.
Good times.
Over the years, Cookie Monster would embrace a more balanced diet
(Buzz-kill Monster, anyone?) and ditch the pipe he smoked and ate when
hosting “Monsterpiece Theater.” Big Bird’s imaginary friend,
Snuffleupagus, curiously became visible to everyone else. Everything got
brighter and cleaner.
Formats and characters have come and gone, influenced by new
platforms, other available programming, new research into the education
of its target prekindergarten audience and other factors. Story threads
have become streamlined to hammer home points.
Elmo, the chirpy red monster who’s forever age 31/2, became a star,
a marketing sensation, and “Elmo’s World” came to eclipse a lot of what
was around it. He’s now front and center with Abby Cadabby and Cookie
Monster — flanked by Big Bird, Grover, Oscar and Rosita — as the central
focus.
So there’s a lot of change and a few dollars to go with it. It’s an
on-demand world, and 4-year-olds can be among the most demanding, so it
will be clear soon enough whether this is their sippy cup of apple juice
or not.
It is a sign of the times that a program as identified with PBS as
“Nova,” European accents, Charlie Rose’s table and pledge breaks has to
work two sides of the street to avoid getting kicked to the curb. But,
as Count von Count would note, every dollar adds up.
If this arrangement with HBO works, it’s good for “Sesame Street,”
good for its audience and good for public TV. If not, well, only a
certain kind of monster would want to see that.
philrosent...@tribpub.com Twitter @phil_rosenthal
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*================================================ Duane Whittingham -
N9SSN (ARES/RACES, EmComm, Skywarn & Red Cross)
http://www.radiodude.info ================================================*
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