'Sesame Street' strikes a deal with HBO for the next 5 years
Popular American television series “ Sesame Street” will be aired exclusively on the premium cable network HBO starting in the fall in the U.S. Non-profit group Sesame Workshop has signed a deal of five years with HBO on Thursday.
The Sesame group is expected to produce 35 new episodes of “Sesame Street” per year straight up from the present 18 episodes and introduce various other new programming. The partnership is indicative of production boost for the financially-challenged Sesame Workshop.
It also has plans to make a spinoff series based on the “Sesame Street” Muppets and other children’s educational series. The show will also appear for free on PBS, where it has run for the last 45 years, after completing nine months on HBO.
"Our new partnership with HBO represents a true winning public-private partnership model," Jeffrey Dunn, Sesame Workshops CEO, said in a statement. He further said that it will help the workshop with extra funding to continue with “Sesame Street’s” productions smoothly and to ensure reaching its mission of “helping kids grow smarter, stronger and kinder."
As the Sesame Workshop’s fund was decreasing day by day, fully relying on licensing revenue for the production to keep running was not an option. Its income also started falling because more viewers were using streaming and on-demand services.
In a statement, HBO executives appreciated the show, saying it was "the most important preschool education program in the history of television." While HBO's most popular shows included adult-themed dramas, such as "The Sopranos" and "Game of Thrones," it has also produced and aired other children's shows over the years, including Jim Henson's "Fraggle Rock."
However, airing a children’s show on a premium channel immediately called for criticisms. Hundreds of people took to social networking sites to express their discontentment and said the partnership would amount to economic class divide by projecting PBS as favouring privileged children and discarding the economically backward ones, whom the show was originally aimed at.
“Kids are getting squeezed in the middle,” said Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council , a nonpartisan education group that advocates for responsible entertainment. “I can’t imagine a greater juxtaposition in television than this,” he added.
Other critics said that the “Sesame-HBO” partnership could undermine its pedagogical mission. Currently, “Sesame Street” is airing on ABC every Saturday 9am .
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