Sesame Street – Are the Changes Good?

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Jesse, Katie Couric and Elmo

Has Sesame Street changed too much? Yes, according to the Sesame Street- Has- Changed Way-Too- Much Facebook fans.

But sometimes you have to break an egg to make an omelette.

If you haven’t watched in a while, Maria, Gordon, Bob and Luis are still there as are Big Bird, Bert, Ernie, Oscar, and the Count. However, Oscar is less grouchy, Cookie Monster calls cookies “sometimes food,” and the street is less gritty. You can still see celebrities; James Earl Jones was first to appear and there have been more than 440 celebrity visitors since,  including four first ladies.

Soon to be introduced, in a new Disney movie, is Walter who lacks self confidence but lights up around other muppets.  Lily, a seven-year-old muppet, whose family is struggling to have enough food is also a new addition to Sesame’s television program. Lily’s family frequents a food pantry, helping to raise awareness of hunger issues in the U.S. as well as provide information and resources to help families who don’t know how or where they are going to get their next meal.

Elmo (the only puppet to testify before Congress according to sesamestreet.org) was introduced in 1998 to capture the two-year old viewer. Also added through the years were Jesse, Elmo’s cousin, who receives help coping with the death of her father; Murray Monster, who introduces new vocabulary words through his “What’s the Word on the Street?”  segment; Abby Cadabby, a three-year-old fairy-in-training and the bilingual Rosita, who speaks both Spanish and English. (For a complete list of characters, Sesame Street.org.)

Throughout the years, they’ve also added parodies like CSI, Desperate Houseplants, Mad Men, True Mud and The Closer – some of which have gone viral.

Ratings Dropped But Never Bet Against a Talking Bird

November 10th is Sesame Street’s birthday.  In 2009, on its 40^th birthday, the word on the street was competition.  Hit by newer children’s shows, cable, DVDs, and changing viewing habits, its Nielsen rating dropped to 15, number of episodes produced went from a high of 130 to 26, and 20% of their staff needed to be laid off.

With the surprising decline in ratings last year, the Children’s Television Network dusted off their feathers, made some changes and consequently garnered 14 Emmy nominations in 2010 and a 60% increase in their Nielsen rating. Changes included Murray the Monster Muppet hosting each episode from different locations, new opening and closing sequences, chalk-art animations, and a re-versioned “Sunny Days.

Disneyland’s November 2011 release of the new movie  “The Muppets” is an effort to help the Sesame Street franchise compete against the likes of Pixar and other animated films.  Sesame Street movies have not had a major hit in  32 years. However, according to early reviews this one has “blockbuster potential.”

In Its Way – A Quiet Revolution

“No show has affected the way we think about education, parenting, childhood development and cultural diversity, both in the United States and abroad, more than Big Bird and friends,”  according to Newsweek.

Changing early childhood education

Before Sesame Street, children’s television consisted of shows like Captain Kangaroo, Bozo and Romper Room. “It was dumbed-down fun,” said Joan Ganz Cooney, the show’s visionary.  ”Educators were virtually ignoring the intellect of preschool children.”

Children would eat up the ABCs before kindergarten, Cooney believed, especially if a wacky puppet ate up alphabet-shaped cookies along with them. The first season set out to teach children to count from one to 10, but it became clear that kids as young as 2 could make it to 20. (The show now hits 100, counting by tens.)

“Before Sesame Street, kindergartens taught very little,” says Cooney, “and suddenly masses of children were coming in knowing letters and numbers. When people think of Sesame Street as the essence of educational television, what they don’t realize is how much the show has educated the educators.”

Children who regularly watch Sesame Street gained more than non-viewers on tests of letter and number recognition, vocabulary and early math skills. These positive outcomes on reading and achievement lasted through high school according to the Newsweek article.

Prodding social change

Murray the Monster

Everyone on the street gets along – people of all colors, nationalities and abilities. They brought these ideas center stage. They taught us how we should behave.

In 1970, because Sesame Street regularly featured African-Americans on a level playing field, the show was banned in Mississippi by the state’s commission for educational television. The decision was later reversed but not without a lot of discussion.

In 1998, a Middle East version was launched, co-produced by Israelis and Palestinians. The Israeli and Palestinian Muppets lived on different streets, but they would sometimes visit each other to play. Israeli Muppets could appear in Palestinian territory, but not without being invited.

But the intifada made the notion of coexistence and cooperation politically untenable and it was cancelled. The show returned in 2006 with separate versions produced for Israel and the Palestinian territories. The Palestinian one no longer features Jews at all according to the book Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street.

In South Africa, where as recently as 2008 the president insisted that HIV does not cause AIDS, the show featured a ginger-colored, HIV-positive Muppet. The South African Sesame is also now produced in 12 of the country’s official languages.

Winner of the Most Emmy Awards For a Reason

There are reasons why Sesame Street, with its 122 Emmy Awards, has won more Emmy’s than any other television show.

They do their research and take calculated risks. They not only researched early child learning but children’s viewing behavior as well. Sesame Street was the first preschool educational television program to base its contents and production values on laboratory and formative research.

Popular Muppets

When it launched in 1969, The New York Times reported that Sesame Street was one of the most elaborately planned television series of all times. Producers did extensive research to learn how to captivate young viewers and hold their attention. It was their belief that if you could hold the attention of children, you could educate them.

While expert advisors felt children interacting with the Muppets would be confusing, Sesame Street producers found that kids paid attention during the Muppet segments but not during the Street segments which featured only humans. So they went against the advice of the experts.

Sesame Street’s decision to defy the recommendations of their advisers was “a turning point in the history of Sesame Street” according to researcher Gerald S. Lesser. This decision resulted in, as writer Malcolm Gladwell called it,  ”the essence of Sesame Street—the artful blend of fluffy monsters and earnest adults”.

Happy Birthday Sesame Street. Thank you for changing and staying relevant. Here’s to many more wonderful years together.

Popular Sesame Street Items on Amazon

Sesame Street: 40 Years of Sunny Days DVD $17.49

Sesame Street: Old School $26.99

Sesame Street Elmo Plush $12.87

Sesame Street Cookie Monster - $24.99

 Sesame Street Big Bird $12.05

Sesame Street Snuffleupugus $12.05

Sesame Street Ernie $12.95

Sesame Street Bert $12.17

Sesame Street Abby Cadabby $13.67

Source: sesamestreet.org, hollywoodreporter, Newsweek, Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street, education-portal, Wikipedia; photos: andrewstclair, omh)

Posted on 10. Nov, 2010 by Pat in Parenting

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