everything from lunch boxes and toys to diapers
and commercials for Farmers Insurance.
Big Bird in 2012 found himself unexpectedly in
the presidential race when Mitt Romney said he
would defund public broadcasting if elected.
“I love Big Bird,” then-President Barack Obama
retorted. (On “Saturday Night Live,” Big Bird
insisted he didn’t want to “ruffle any feathers.”)
The government gives about 4% — less than $5
million a year — to the show in grants.
In 2015, the longtime PBS show inked a five-year
pact with HBO that gave the premium cable
channel the right to air new episodes nine months
before they air on PBS. That prompted some
criticism that Sesame Workshop favored viewers
who could afford HBO over those who could not.
Before each season, educators and creators
gather to align the curriculum with the latest
thinking. In the past, for example, narrative
stories were broken up into little chunks
because the thinking at the time was that kids
couldn’t follow a long story. That turns out not
to be true, and “Sesame Street” now delivers
10-minute narratives.
Sesame Workshop has also pared episodes from
an hour to 30 minutes, and the show is now
shot on 4K, with the creators knowing that most
children are watching on tablets or phones.
Does it all really help? In 2016, Levine and
economist Melissa Kearney at the University of
Maryland produced one of the most widely cited
studies about the impact of “Sesame Street.”
They compared households that got the show
with those who didn’t and found that the
children exposed to “Sesame Street” were 14%
more likely to be enrolled in the correct grade
level for their age at middle and high school.