Sesame Street is an American educational children's television series that combines live-action, sketch comedy, animation and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop and was created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett. It is known for its images communicated through the use 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 the United States national public television provider PBS since its debut, with its first run moving to premium channel HBO on January 16, 2016, then its sister streaming service HBO Max in 2020. Sesame Street is one of the longest-running shows in the world.
Sesame Workshop (SW), originally known as the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), is an American nonprofit organization that has been responsible for the production of several educational children's programs—including its first and best-known, Sesame Street—that have been televised internationally. Television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and foundation executive Lloyd Morrisett developed the idea to form an organization to produce Sesame Street, a television series which would help children, especially those from low-income families, prepare for school. They spent two years, from 1966 to 1968, researching, developing, and raising money for the new series. Cooney was named as the Workshop's first executive director, which was termed "one of the most important television developments of the decade."
The preschool educational television program Sesame Street was first aired on public television stations on November 10, 1969, and reached its 53rd season in 2022. The history of Sesame Street has reflected changing attitudes to developmental psychology, early childhood education, and cultural diversity. Featuring Jim Henson's Muppets, animation, live shorts, humor and celebrity appearances, it was the first television program of its kind to base its content and production values on laboratory and formative research, and the first to include a curriculum "detailed or stated in terms of measurable outcomes". 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 independent international versions had been produced. It has won eleven Grammys and over 150 Emmys in its history—more than any other children's show.
Mr. Harold Hooper was one of the first four human characters to appear on the television series Sesame Street. Created by producer and writer Jon Stone, Mr. Hooper is the original proprietor of Hooper's Store, the neighborhood variety store and combination diner/corner store that serves as a place for Muppets and humans to meet and interact. Lee, a character actor and instructor was "perfectly cast" as Mr. Hooper. Mr. Hooper ranked first of all human characters of the show in recognition by young viewers. Mr. Hooper, who has been described as "slightly cranky but good-hearted" and "curmudgeonly", bridges the gap between the older generation and its young audience. Hooper's Store, "an idealized social institution", is an extension of his personality. He had a close relationship with the Muppet Big Bird.
Plaza Sésamo is one of the first international co-productions of the first preschool television program Sesame Street. Its first season premiered in México in 1972, and the last season ended in 2018 during the holiday season and the 50th anniversary of Sesame Street, but the show returned in 2020 and was immediately a ratings hit. It also aired throughout Latin America, to a potential audience of 25 million children in 34 countries. Unlike some of the earliest co-productions, which consisted of dubbed versions of Sesame Street with local language voice-overs, Plaza Sésamo was a true co-production. Half of the show was adapted from the American show, and half was original material, created in Mexico by Mexican writers, performers, and producers. The first season consisted of 130 half-hour episodes. The Plaza Sésamo development process was similar to that of the American show. Its goals were developed by local experts in television, child development, and early education during curriculum seminars in Caracas, Venezuela. Sésamo's goals emphasized problem solving and reasoning, and also included perception, symbolic representation, human diversity, and the child's environment. Other goals included community cooperation, family life, nutrition, health, safety, self-esteem, and expressing emotions. Early reading skills were taught through the whole language method. The show's budget for the first and second seasons was approximately US$1.6 million.
Kevin Jeffrey Clash is an American puppeteer, director and producer known for puppeteering Elmo on Sesame Street from 1984 to 2012. He also performed puppets for Labyrinth, Dinosaurs, Oobi, and various Muppet productions.
Elmo's World is a segment that is shown at the end of the long-running American children's television program Sesame Street which premiered on November 16, 1998, as part of a broader structural change to the show. It originally lasted fifteen minutes at the end of each episode. The segment ran until 2009, and then returned in 2017. The segment was designed to appeal to younger viewers and to increase ratings, which had fallen in the past decade. The segment is presented from the perspective of a three-year-old child as represented by its host, the Muppet Elmo, performed by Kevin Clash in the original series and Ryan Dillon in the 2017 reboot.
Joan Ganz Cooney is an American television writer and producer. She is one of the founders of Sesame Workshop, the organization famous for the creation of the children's television show Sesame Street, which was also co-created by her. Cooney grew up in Phoenix and earned a Bachelor of Arts in education from the University of Arizona in 1951. After working for the State Department in Washington, D.C., and as a journalist in Phoenix, she worked as a publicist for television and production companies in New York City. In 1961, she became interested in working for educational television, and became a documentary producer for New York's first educational TV station WNET. Many of the programs she produced won local Emmys.
Matthew Thomas Robinson Jr. was an American actor, writer and television producer. Robinson was the first actor to portray the character of Gordon Robinson on the PBS children's TV program Sesame Street. When Sesame Street began in 1969, not only did Robinson play Gordon, but he also provided the voice of the puppet Roosevelt Franklin and was one of the show's producers. He left the show in 1972. In later years, when producers needed a last name for the Gordon character, then played by Hal Miller and later Roscoe Orman, they used Matt's last name.
William Lee was an American actor who appeared in numerous television and film roles, but was best known for playing Mr. Hooper, the original store proprietor of the eponymous Hooper's Store. He was one of the four original human characters on Sesame Street, from the show's debut in November 1969 until his death on December 7, 1982 at the age of 74.
Emilio Ernest Delgado was an American actor best known for his role as Luis, the Fix-it Shop owner, on the children's television series Sesame Street. Delgado joined the cast of Sesame Street in 1971 and remained until his contract was not renewed in late 2016, as part of Sesame Workshop's retooling of the series.
The Robinson family is a fictional family in the children's television series Sesame Street. The family consists of husband Gordon, a high school science teacher, and his wife, Susan, a nurse. Later, the family expands to include their adopted son, Miles, as well as Gordon's sister, Olivia, his father, Mr. Robinson, and a brother. As African Americans, the family was created as leads for the show, originally targeted to underprivileged inner city children. Even as human roles were slowly reduced over the years, their characters maintained a constant presence.
A wide variety of characters have appeared on the American children's television series Sesame Street. Many of the characters are Muppets, which are puppets made in Jim Henson's distinctive puppet-creation style. Most of the non-Muppet characters are human characters, but there are many characters that are animated.
Children and Television: Lessons from Sesame Street (1974) is a non-fiction book written by Gerald S. Lesser, in which he describes the production of Sesame Street, and the formation and pedagogical philosophy of the Children's Television Workshop. Lesser was a professor at Harvard University, studying how social class and ethnicity interacted with school achievement and was one of the first academics in the US who researched how watching television affected children and their development. He was initially skeptical about the potential of using television as a teaching tool, but he was eventually named as the advisory board chairman of the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), the organization created to oversee the production and research of Sesame Street, and was the show's first educational director. Lesser wrote the book early in Sesame Street's history, to evaluate the show's effectiveness, to explain what its writers, researchers, and producers were attempting to do, and to respond to criticism of Sesame Street.
Gerald Samuel Lesser was an American psychologist who served on the faculty of Harvard University from 1963 until his retirement in 1998. Lesser was one of the chief advisers to the Children's Television Workshop in the development and content of the educational programming included in the children's television program Sesame Street. At Harvard, he was chair of the university's Human Development Program for 20 years, which focused on cross-cultural studies of child rearing, and studied the effects of media on young children. In 1974, he wrote Children and Television: Lessons From Sesame Street, which chronicled how Sesame Street was developed and put on the air. Lesser developed many of the research methods the CTW used throughout its history and for other TV shows. In 1968, before the debut of Sesame Street, he led a series of content seminars, an important part of the "CTW Model", which incorporated educational pedagogy and research into TV scripts and was used to develop other educational programs and organizations all over the world. He died in 2010, at the age of eighty-four, and was survived by his wife, a daughter, a son, and a grandchild.
In 1969, the children's television show Sesame Street premiered on the National Educational Television network in the United States. Unlike earlier children's programming, the show's producers used research and over 1,000 studies and experiments to create the show and test its impact on its young viewers' learning. By the end of the program's first season, Children's Television Workshop (CTW), the organization founded to oversee Sesame Street production, had developed what came to be called "the CTW model": a system of planning, production, and evaluation that combined the expertise of researchers and early childhood educators with that of the program's writers, producers, and directors.
Sesame Street is an American children's television program that is known for its use of format and structure to convey educational concepts to its preschool audience, and to help them prepare for school. It utilizes the conventions of television such as music, humor, sustained action, and a strong visual style, and combines Jim Henson's Muppets, animation, short films, humor, and cultural references. The show, which premiered in 1969, was the first to base its contents, format, and production values on laboratory and formative research. According to researchers, it was also the first to include a curriculum "detailed or stated in terms of measurable outcomes".
The children's television show Sesame Street, which premiered on public broadcasting television stations in 1969, was the first show of its kind that utilized a detailed and comprehensive educational curriculum, with specific educational goals, in its content. Its goals were garnered from in-house formative research and independent summative evaluations, and its first curriculum was created in a series of five seminars in 1968.
The children's television program Sesame Street premiered in 1969 to high ratings, positive reviews, and some controversy, which have continued during its history. Even though the show aired on only 67% of American televisions at the time of its premiere, it earned a 3.3 Nielsen rating, or 1.9 million households. By its tenth anniversary in 1979, 9 million American children under the age of six were watching Sesame Street daily. Its ratings declined in the 1990s, due to societal changes. A survey conducted in 1996 found that by the age of three, 95% of all American children had watched it. By its fortieth anniversary in 2009, it was ranked the fifteenth most popular children's show.
Rechov Sumsum is the Israeli adaptation of the U.S. children's show of the same name.
