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 the first time 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. 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.
History
Sesame Street was conceived in 1966 during discussions between television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and Carnegie Foundation vice president Lloyd Morrisett. Their goal was to create a children's television show that would "master the addictive qualities of television and do something good with them", such as helping young children prepare for school. After two years of research, the newly formed Children's Television Workshop (CTW) received a combined grant of $8 million ($48 million in 2011 dollars) from the Carnegie Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the US federal government to create and produce a new children's television show. The program premiered on public broadcasting television stations on November 10, 1969. It was the first preschool educational television program to base its contents and production values on laboratory and formative research. Initial responses to the show included adulatory reviews, some controversy, and high ratings. By its 40th anniversary in 2009, Sesame Street was broadcast in over 120 countries, and 20 international versions had been produced.
I've always said of our original team that developed and produced Sesame Street: Collectively, we were a genius.
Sesame Street creator Joan Ganz Cooney
Sesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution".The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The show's success continued into the 1980s. In 1981, the federal government withdrew its funding, so CTW turned to other sources, including its magazine division, book royalties, product licensing, and foreign income. Sesame Street's curriculum has expanded to include more affective topics such as relationships, ethics, and emotions. Many of the show's storylines were taken from the experiences of its writing staff, cast, and crew. Most notable of these are the 1982 death of Will Lee—who played Mr. Hooper—and the marriage of Luis and Maria in 1988.
Format of Sesame Street
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 and 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.[20] 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.
Educational goals of Sesame Street
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 needed to capture, focus, and sustain children's attention. 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.
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 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 Foundations CPB 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 broadcast television 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.
Production
Sesame Street research
As Cooney has stated, "Without research, there would be no Sesame Street". In 1967, when Cooney and her team began to plan the show's development, combining research with television production was, as she put it, "positively heretical".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 that did not fully emerge until the end of the show's first season. According to Morrow, the CTW model consisted of four parts: "the interaction of receptive television producers and child science experts, the creation of a specific and age-appropriate curriculum, research to shape the program directly, and independent measurement of viewers' learning".
Cooney credited the show's high standard in research procedures to Harvard professors Gerald S. Lesser, whom the CTW hired to design the show's educational objectives, and Edward L. Palmer, who was responsible for conducting the show's formative research and for bridging the gap between the show's producers and researchers. The CTW conducted research in two ways: in-house formative research that informed and improved production,[46] and independent summative evaluations, conducted by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) during the show's first two seasons, which measuring its educational effectiveness
Writing
Sesame Street has used many writers in its long history. As Dave Connell, one of Sesame Street's original producers, has stated, it was difficult to find adults who could identify a preschooler's interest level. Fifteen writers a year worked on the show's scripts, but very few lasted longer than one season. Norman Stiles, head writer in 1987, reported that most writers would "burn out" after writing about a dozen scripts.According to Gikow, Sesame Street went against the convention of hiring teachers to write for the show, as most educational television programs did at the time. Instead, Cooney and the producers felt that it would be easier to teach writers how to interpret curriculum than to teach educators how to write comedy. As Stone stated, "Writing for children is not so easy". Long-time writer Tony Geiss agreed, stating in 2009, "It's not an easy show to write. You have to know the characters and the format and how to teach and be funny at the same time, which is a big, ambidextrous stunt".
The research team, in a series of meetings with the writers, also developed "a curriculum sheet" that described the show's goals and priorities for each season. After receiving the curriculum focus and goals for the season, the writers met to discuss ideas and story arcs for the characters, and an "assignment sheet" was created that suggested how much time was allotted for each goal and topic. When a script was completed, the show's research team analyzed it to ensure that the goals were met. Then each production department met to determine what each episode needed in terms of costumes, lights, and sets. The writers were present during the show's taping, which for the first twenty-four years of the show took place in Manhattan, and after 1992, at the Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, New York, to make last-minute revisions when necessary.
Sesame Street media
Sesame Street and the CTW, early in their history, began to look for alternative funding sources and turned to creating products and licensing agreements. They became, as Cooney put it, "a multiple-media institution". In 1970, the CTW created a "non-broadcast" division responsible for creating and publishing books and Sesame Street Magazine. They decided that all materials their licensing program created would "underscore and amplify" the show's curriculum. In 2004, over 68% of Sesame Street's revenue came from licenses and products such as toys and clothing. By 2008, the Sesame Street Muppets accounted for between $15 million and $17 million per year in licensing and merchandising fees, split between the Sesame Workshop and Henson Associates.
Jim Henson, as their creators, owned the trademarks to the Muppet characters, and he was reluctant to market them at first. He agreed when the CTW promised that the profits from toys, books, computer games, and other products were to be used exclusively to fund the CTW and its outreach efforts. Even though Cooney and the CTW had very little experience with marketing, they demanded complete control over all products and product decisions. Any product line associated with the show had to be educational, inexpensive, and not advertised during the show's airings.[65] As Davis reported, "Cooney stressed restraint, prudence, and caution" in their marketing and licensing efforts.
Director Jon Stone stated about the music of Sesame Street: "There was no other sound like it on television". For the first time in children's television, the show's songs fulfilled a specific purpose and supported its curriculum. In order to attract the best composers and lyricists, the CTW allowed songwriters like Sesame Street's first musical director Joe Raposo to retain the rights to the songs they wrote. For the first time in children's television, the writers earned lucrative profits, which helped the show sustain public interest. By 1991, Sesame Street had received eight Grammys.
Sesame Street used animations and short films, interspersed throughout each episode, to help teach their viewers basic concepts like numbers and letters. The CTW commissioned outside studios to create and produce them. Jim Henson was one of the many producers who created short films for the show. Shortly after Sesame Street debuted in the US, the CTW was approached independently by producers from several countries to produce versions of the show in their countries. These versions came be called "co-productions".
Cast, crew, and characters
Shortly after the CTW was created in 1968, Joan Ganz Cooney was named its first executive director. She was one of the first female executives in American television; her appointment was called "one of the most important television developments of the decade". She assembled a team of producers, all of whom had previously worked on Captain Kangaroo. Jon Stone was responsible for writing, casting, and format; Dave Connell took over animation; and Sam Gibbon served as the show's chief liaison between the production staff and the research team. Cameraman Frankie Biondo started working on Sesame Street from its first episode.
Jim Henson and the Muppets' involvement in Sesame Street began when he and Cooney met at one of the curriculum planning seminars in Boston. Author Christopher Finch reported that Stone, who had worked with Henson previously, felt that if they could not bring him on board, they should "make do without puppets". Henson was initially reluctant, but he agreed to join Sesame Street for social goals. He also agreed to waive his performance fee for full ownership of the Sesame Street Muppets and to split any revenue they generated with the CTW.As Morrow stated, Henson's puppets were a crucial part of the show's popularity and it brought Henson national attention. Davis reported that Henson was able to take "arcane academic goals" and translate them to "effective and pleasurable viewing". In early research, the Muppet segments of the show scored high, and more Muppets were added during the first few seasons. Morrow reported that the Muppets were effective teaching tools because children easily recognized them, they were stereotypical and predictable, and they appealed to adults and older siblings.
Sesame Street is best known for the creative geniuses it attracted, people like Jim Henson and Joe Raposo and Frank Oz, who intuitively grasped what it takes to get through to children. They were television's answer to Beatrix Potter or L. Frank Baum or Dr. Seuss.
Author Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
Although the producers decided against depending upon a single host for Sesame Street and to cast a group of ethnically diverse actors,[84] they realized that a children's television program needed to have, as Lesser put it, "a variety of distinctive and reliable personalities", both human and Muppet. Jon Stone, whose goal was to cast white actors in the minority, was responsible for hiring the show's first cast. He did not audition actors until Spring 1969, a few weeks before the five test shows were due to be filmed. Stone videotaped the auditions, and Ed Palmer took them out into the field to test children's reactions. The actors who received the "most enthusiastic thumbs up" were cast. For example, Loretta Long was chosen to play Susan when the children who saw her audition stood up and sang along with her rendition of "I'm a Little Teapot". As Stone said, casting was the only aspect of the show that was "just completely haphazard". Most of the cast and crew found jobs on Sesame Street through personal relationships with Stone and the other producers.
Influence of Sesame Street
Ratings
When Sesame Street premiered in 1969, it aired on only 67.6% of American televisions, but it earned a 3.3 Nielsen rating, which totaled 1.9 million households.[93] By the show's tenth anniversary in 1979, 9 million American children under the age of six were watching Sesame Street daily. According to a 1993 survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, out of the show's 6.6 million viewers, 2.4 million kindergartners regularly watched it. 77% of preschoolers watched it once a week, and 86% of kindergartners and first- and second-grade students had watched it once a week before starting school. The show reached most young children in almost all demographic groups.
The show's ratings significantly decreased in the early 1990s, resulting from changes in children's viewing habits and in the television marketplace. The producers responded to by making large-scale structural changes to the show. By 2006, Sesame Street had become "the most widely viewed children's television show in the world", with 20 international independent versions and broadcasts in over 120 countries. 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. By the show's 40th anniversary in 2009, it was ranked the fifteenth most popular children's show on television.
Influence
As of 2001, there were over 1,000 research studies regarding Sesame Street's efficacy, impact, and effect on American culture. The CTW solicited the Educational Testing Service (ETS) to conduct summative research on the show. ETS's two "landmark" summative evaluations, conducted in 1970 and 1971, demonstrated that the show had a significant educational impact on its viewers. These studies have been cited in other studies of the effects of television on young children. Additional studies conducted throughout Sesame Street's history demonstrated that the show continued to have a positive effect on its young viewers.
Sesame Street is perhaps the most vigorously researched, vetted, and fretted-over program on the planet. It would take a fork-lift to now to haul away the load of scholarly paper devoted to the series...
Author Michael Davis
Lesser believed that Sesame Street research "may have conferred a new respectability upon the studies of the effects of visual media upon children". He also believed that the show had the same effect on the prestige in the television industry of producing shows for children. Historian Robert Morrow, in his book Sesame Street and the Reform of Children's Television, which chronicled the show's influence on children's television and on the television industry as a whole, reported that many critics of commercial television saw Sesame Street as a "straightforward illustration for reform". Les Brown, a writer for Variety, saw in Sesame Street "a hope for a more substantial future" for television.
Critical reception
Sesame Street was praised from its debut in 1969. Newsday reported that several newspapers and magazines had written "glowing" reports about the CTW and Cooney. The press overwhelmingly praised the new show; several popular magazines and niche magazines lauded it.In 1970, Sesame Street won twenty awards, including a Peabody Award, three Emmys, an award from the Public Relations Society of America, a Clio, and a Prix Jeunesse. By 1995, the show had won two Peabody Awards and four Parents' Choice Awards. In addition, it was the subject of retrospectives at the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum of Modern Art.
Sesame Street is...with lapses, the most intelligent and important program in television. That is not anything much yet.
Renata Adler, The New Yorker, 1972
Sesame Street was not without its detractors, however. In May 1970, a state commission in Mississippi voted to ban Sesame Street because of its "highly integrated cast of children" which "the commission members felt ... Mississippi was not yet ready for". According to Children and Television, Lesser's account of the development and early years of Sesame Street, there was little criticism of the show in the months following its premiere, but it increased at the end of its first season and beginning of the second season. Historian Robert W. Morrow speculated that much of the early criticism, which he called "surprisingly intense", stemmed from cultural and historical reasons in regards to, as he put it, "the place of children in American society and the controversies about television's effects on them".
According to Morrow, the "most important" studies finding negative effects of Sesame Street were conducted by educator Herbert A. Sprigle and psychologist Thomas D. Cook during its first two seasons. Social scientist and Head Start Program founder Urie Bronfenbrenner criticized the show for being too wholesome.Psychologist Leon Eisenberg saw Sesame Street's urban setting as "superficial" and having little to do with the problems confronted by the inner-city child. Head Start director Edward Zigler was probably Sesame Street's most vocal critic in the show's early years.
In spite of their commitment to multiculturalism, the CTW experienced conflicts with the leadership of minority groups, especially Latino groups and feminists, who objected to Sesame Street's depiction of Latinos and women. The CTW took steps to address their objections. By 1971, the CTW hired Hispanic actors, production staff, and researchers, and by the mid-70s, Morrow reported that "the show included Chicano and Puerto Rican cast members, films about Mexican holidays and foods, and cartoons that taught Spanish words". As The New York Times has stated, creating strong female characters "that make kids laugh, but not...as female stereotypes"has been a challenge for the producers of Sesame Street. According to Morrow, change regarding how women and girls were depicted on Sesame Street occurred slowly. As more female Muppets performers like Fran Brill, Stephanie D'Abruzzo, and Leslie Carrara-Rudolph were hired and trained, stronger female characters like Abby Cadabby were created.
In 2002, Sesame Street was ranked #27 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.As of 2009, Sesame Street has received 118 Emmy Awards, more than any other television series.
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