In a recent WSJ interview, Sesame Workshop CEO Jeffrey D. Dunn admitted that Sesame has been eclipsed by other competitors who have chosen to expand from a collection of shows into a full-fledged network (Disney, Nickelodeon, etc.). “The advantage you have as a network is substantial,” Dunn said. “You can control your air time. We are a show. We don’t control our air time. We’re not a network.”
After 46 years, the argument can certainly be made that the time has come for Sesame Workshop to grow from a TV show into a full-fledged TV network. Not to simplify the scope of what they do today; the Sesame Street program is distributed to countries around the world, and is packaged in countless ways to reach wildly different cultures, each of which educate their young in specific ways. The impact of Sesame Street is felt worldwide.
Still, Sesame Street is one show amidst an ever-increasing number of alternatives for parents (and children). Digital distribution models via set-top boxes, Smart TV software, and tablet viewing offers parents limitless options for their children’s viewing. It’s more important than ever for Sesame Workshop to establish themselves as the major player in this new entertainment distribution model.
Needless to say, it would be difficult for anyone’s programming schedule to grow from 1 hour daily into 24. You’d have to have mountains of content to handle an expansion of that magnitude. Forget about 24 hours, there are 168 hours in a week. Roughly 672 hours in a month. 8,760 hours in a year. How do you fill all of that time? It can’t be done with only one TV show, even Sesame Street. Surprisingly though, Sesame Street can fill roughly half of that. In its first 45 years, Sesame Street’s programming totals 4,385 hours. Season 46 airs this fall.
What if Sesame Street did become a network? What would that mean for Sesame Workshop as an entertainment company, to suddenly have an exponentially larger window to present educational experiences to youngsters? There are pros and cons to the idea, but Sesame is already leaning that direction with their newly-launched digital streaming service Sesame Street Go. It’s hard to deny that “someday, little children, someday soon”, Sesame Street might grow from a TV show to an entire network.
If that does happen, here are just a few things that could be a huge win for we their loyal fans:
Sesame Street is the best educational children’s show on TV. Given that unbiased assessment, it stands to reason that any new shows they create also have the potential to be head and shoulders above many other children’s shows. The educational research they put into everything they do is sound, and the production values are spectacular. No one can question the integrity behind everything Sesame Workshop does. They’ve also created characters and songs that we’ve loved for decades. Not only are they educationally sound, but they’re very, very good at creating musical earworms and visual eyeworms (is that a word? Because it is now.).
The money is in the channel. In today’s digital environment, we can instantly watch nearly anything we want, anytime, anywhere. That’s wonderful for audiences, but terrifying for studios. It’s very tough to be a successful content producer right now. Every TV show is in competition with every other show, not just in one time slot, but in every second of every day. It’s impossibly hard and honestly I wouldn’t want to do it. And that isn’t limited to only television, obviously. Every YouTube video (even Sesame Street’s YouTube channel), every song, every blog post has a high probability of being gone from sight as soon as it’s published – an atom of hydrogen in a molecule of water in a drop of rain landing in the middle of a bottomless ocean. It’s even more difficult to make serious money from content production. YouTubers, musicians, and the like make a few dollars at a time, and YouTube and iTunes at the same time make millions. This happens in music, television, movies, and everywhere else in entertainment. You don’t want to be the content provider (“the show”) right now. The real money is in owning the channel of distribution. Sesame Workshop is a non-profit, but they are still a business, one run by very smart people. Becoming a network is the smart move.
They could do anything in 24 hours. Having a full day’s worth of time to fill on a TV channel would give them the opportunity to create many different kinds of programs. Plus, they could take advantage of different time slots, something they’ve never considered before. In different hours of the day, they could show different programs. Who’s up at midnight watching the Sesame Channel? Not my 3-year old, for sure, but I’m awake, and maybe I’d enjoy watching their older, classic Sesame episodes…which for some reason they don’t feel are “right” for today’s children. But that’s a different discussion.
I want them to. Not to make this about me, but I think it would be great if they became a cable channel and I could watch them anytime I wanted. Granted I can do that now, on Netflix and the like, but there’s something appealing about the thought of flipping to their channel and watching whatever Sesame show is on, not having to choose it ahead of time. Didn’t Apple just have a lot to say about “human-curated content”? It’s the element of surprise. Our brains like that. Sesame Street is all about brains.
Also, at this point I see no problem with them becoming a cable channel (other than the fact that cable providers are awful monopolies, but that’s also another discussion). There was a time when it made sense to broadcast on the public airwaves and be as accessible as possible because no one had cable, and their target audience was quite poor. That was then, this is now. Almost everybody has cable, a smartphone, or computer, or one or some combination of those. Large segments of the population (the U.S. population, at least) wouldn’t be shut out if Sesame Workshop had a cable channel.
There are a hundred more reasons that a Sesame Street network would be good for fans. A network allows for more broadcast time, more time to fill means more shows, more shows means more talented people being hired, more talent and more shows means more new characters, and more characters and shows means more memorable Sesame moments in the future (that become the classic moments our kids will look back on later, just like we do today). Also, at this point everybody else has done it. It’s time for Sesame Street to take the next step forward.
Sesame wasn’t the first TV show to feature puppets, but they quickly became the best at it. They won’t be the first network to spring from a TV production (hello Disney!), but because it’s Sesame Workshop, it would very likely be different – and better – than the rest.
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