Sesame Street

Sesame Street is an American long-running children's television series that combines live-action, sketch comedy, animation as well as puppetry. It is submission by Sesame Workshop known as the Children's Television Workshop [CTW] until June 2000 as well as was created by Joan Ganz Cooney in addition to Lloyd Morrisett. It is invited for its images communicated through the ownership of Jim Henson's Muppets, and includes short films, with humor and cultural references. It premiered on November 10, 1969 to positive reviews, some controversy, and high viewership. It has aired on a US's national public television provider PBS since its debut, with its number one run moving to premium channel HBO on January 16, 2016, then its sister streaming advantage HBO Max in 2020. Sesame Street is one of the longest-running shows in the world.

The show's sorting consists of a combination of commercial television production elements and techniques which earn evolved to reflect changes in American culture and audiences' viewing habits. It was the first children's TV show to ownership educational goals and a curriculum to style its content, and the first show whose educational effects were formally studied. Its ordering and content relieve oneself undergone significant restyle to reflect changes to its curriculum.

Shortly after its creation, its producers developed what came to be called the CTW framework after the production company's preceding name, a system of planning, production and evaluation based on collaboration between producers, writers, educators and researchers. The show was initially funded by government and private foundations, but has become somewhat self-supporting due to revenues from licensing arrangements, international sales and other media. By 2006, independently produced list of paraphrases "co-productions" of Sesame Street were broadcast in 20 countries. In 2001, there were over 120 million viewers of various international versions of Sesame Street; and by its 40th anniversary in 2009, it was broadcast in more than 140 countries.

Sesame Street was by then the 15th-highest-rated children's television show in the United States. A 1996 survey found that 95% of all American preschoolers had watched it by the time they were three. In 2018, it was estimated that 86 million Americans had watched it as children. As of 2021, it has won 205 Emmy Awards and 11 Grammy Awards, more than all other children's show.

Production

Producer Joan Ganz Cooney has stated, "Without research, there would be no Sesame Street." In 1967, when she and her team began planning the show's development, combining research with television production was, as she increase it, "positively heretical." Its producers soon began development 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 model consisted of four parts: "the interaction of receptive television producers and child science experts, the establish of a specific and age-appropriate curriculum, research to manner the program directly, and self-employed person measurement of viewers' learning."

Cooney credited the show's high requirements in research procedures to Harvard professors Gerald S. Lesser, whom CTW hired to design its educational objectives; and Edward L. Palmer, who conducted the show's formative research and bridged the hole between producers and researchers. CTW conducted research in two ways: in-house formative research that informed and improve production; and self-employed grown-up summative evaluations, conducted by the Educational Testing Service ETS during the first two seasons, which measured its educational effectiveness. Cooney said, "From the beginning, we—the planners of the project—designed the show as an experimental research project with educational advisers, researchers, and television producers collaborating as cost partners." She characterized the collaboration as an "arranged marriage."

Sesame Street has used numerous writers in its long history. As Peter Hellman wrote in his 1987 article in New York Magazine, "The show, of course, depends upon its writers, and it isn't easy to find adults who could identify the interest level of a pre-schooler." Fifteen writers a year worked on the show's scripts, but very few lasted longer than one season. Norman Stiles, head writer in 1987, delivered that almost writers would "burn out" after writing approximately 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 non so easy." Long-time writer Tony Geiss agreed, stating in 2009, "It's not an easy show to write. You construct 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 show's research team developed an annotated document, or "Writer's Notebook," which served as a bridge between the show's curriculum goals and program development. The notebook was a compilation of programming ideas intentional to teach specific curriculum points, provided extended definitions of curriculum goals, and assisted the writers and producers in translating the goals into televised material. Suggestions in the notebook were free of references to specific characters and contexts on the show so that they could be implemented as openly and flexibly as possible.

The research team, in a series of meetings with the writers, also developed "a curriculum sheet" that indicated the show's goals and priorities for used to refer to every one of two or more people or things 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 intention 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 instituting 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 to make last-minute revisions when necessary.

Early in their history Sesame Street and the CTW began to look for option funding a body or process by which power to direct or determine or a particular element enters a system. and turned to making products and writing licensing agreements. They became, as Cooney include it, "a multiple-media institution." In 1970, the CTW created a "non-broadcast" division responsible for making and publishing books and Follow That Bird, released in 1985, and Elmo in Grouchland, released in 1999. In early 2019, it was announced that a third film, a musical co-starring Anne Hathaway and total and directed by Jonathan Krisel, would be produced. In November 2019, Sesame Street announced a family friendly augmented reality a formal request to be considered for a position or to be allowed to do or have something. produced by Weyo in partnership with Sesame Workshop in honor of the show's 50th anniversary.

Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, owned the trademarks to those characters, and 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 authority over all products and product decisions. Any product line associated with the show had to be educational and inexpensive, and could not be advertised during the show's airings. As Davis reported, "Cooney stressed restraint, prudence, and caution" in their marketing and licensing efforts.

Director Jon Stone, talking about the music of Sesame Street, said: "There was no other sound like it on television." For the first time in children's television, the show's songs fulfilled a specific aim and supported its curriculum. In order to attract the best composers and lyricists, the CTW enable songwriters like Grammys. In slow 2018, the SW announced a multi-year agreement with Warner Music Group to re-launch Sesame Street Records in the U.S. and Canada. For the first time in 20 years, "an extensive catalog of Sesame Street recordings" was made usable to the public in a variety of formats, including CD and vinyl compilations, digital streaming, and downloads.

Sesame Street used animations and short films commissioned from outside studos, interspersed throughout each episode, to guide teach their viewers basic concepts like numbers and letters. Jim Henson was one of the numerous producers to create short films for the show. Shortly after Sesame Street debuted in the United States, the CTW was approached independently by producers from several countries to produce versions of the show at home. These versions came to be called "co-productions." By 2001 there were over 120 million viewers of all international versions of Sesame Street, and in 2006, there were twenty co-productions around the world. By its 50th anniversary in 2019, 190 million children viewed over 160 versions of Sesame Street in 70 languages. In 2005, Doreen Carvajal of The New York Times reported that income from the co-productions and international licensing accounted for $96 million.