Since 1969, Sesame Street has provided a children’s program that not only entertains, but also changes with time. In 2002, Sesame Street acknowledged the 9/11 attacks with an episode about how to deal with fear and knowing to trust safety personnel like firefighters. In 2009, at the start of Michelle Obama’s healthy eating campaign, Sesame Street premiered episodes about fresh organic foods. Just recently, the show produced a viral parody of House of Cards about the Three Little Pigs entitled “House of Bricks.”
With all of these changes, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the program is also willing to change networks and that the Sesame Street we all know and love has switched from PBS to HBO for its 46th season.
Elmo, Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch and hordes of other beloved characters made their way to the HBO screen on Jan. 16 for the debut of the new season.
According to The New York Times, the move to HBO “will allow the financially challenged Sesame Workshop to significantly increase its production of ‘Sesame Street’ episodes and other new programming. The group will produce 35 new ‘Sesame Street’ episodes a year, up from the 18 it now produces. It will also create a spinoff series based on the ‘Sesame Street’ Muppets along with another new educational series for children.”
With the gradual move from live TV to on-demand streaming services, the decision to put the series on a stream-worthy platform makes sense. However, Sesame Street now resides in the kids’ section of HBO, an near-Frankenstein compilation of children’s programs.
It’s already weird enough tuning into Sesame Street using the same network that’s home to The Wire and Game of Thrones, but it gets even weirder when you see the other children’s programming lumped with the prolific Sesame Street on the HBO GO streaming site. The kids’ section is, for some reason, home to multiple films starring Frankie Muniz (Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London and Big Fat Liar), assorted flicks from the early 2000s (Shrek, Bee Movie and Ella Enchanted), a Spanish movie about a millionaire dog and something called The Secret of the Magic Gourd.
It seems as if HBO just scrambled to throw whatever they could into something that could be labeled “kids.”
Aside from the strange nature of the HBO kids’ section, Sesame Street now also has to answer to some who say the move to HBO makes the program less accessible to low-income children.
According to NPR, PBS will still play the new shows, but not until nine months after they premiere on HBO.
Regardless, the move to HBO does show a shift in the way children consume entertainment. The millennial generation may be dumbfounded by the changes to the show they once watched on a VCR, but to 2016’s preschooler population, Sesame Street is now just one iPad swipe away.
