Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

A Muppet always pays his debts – Sesame Street finds new home behind paywall

Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street, announced a programming deal that will send Sesame Street from its longtime publicly-subsidized home on PBS to the corporate Time Warner-owned home of Westeros on HBO. According to a press release from Sesame Workshop, the deal includes:

  • a five-year order of 35 episodes per season (nearly twice its current 18 episodes per season);
  • 150 library episodes;
  • a muppet-based spinoff series;
  • an additional educational series;
  • library episodes from Sesame Workshop-produced shows Pinky Dinky Doo; and,
  • 2009 reboot of the 1970s educational series The Electric Company.

New episodes of Sesame Street will begin airing on HBO as early as this fall.

Exact financial details of the agreement were not immediately released. On the surface, this looked like a surprise move. After all, aside from movies, HBO is known primarily for its adult-themed programs like Game of Thrones, The Wire, Girls, and True Detective because FCC governance is less strict on premium television. However, the move benefits both Sesame Workshop and HBO.

From the article "A Muppet always pays his debts – Sesame Street finds new home behind paywall" by Glenn Hower.

Previously In The News

App for COVID-19 contact tracing faces hurdles, generational divide over privacy concerns

A survey of 5,000 adults by Parks Associates indicates roughly half, 52 percent, are willing to share tracking data in an app while 28 percent are unwilling. Twenty percent are willing but only with p...

Entertainment Giants Reevaluate Their Smaller Streaming Services

“They’re all analyzing and asking, ‘Is it best for us to throw everything into one service, like an HBO Max, or have a main anchor service like a Paramount+, but also have the existence of other servi...

HBO Max Finally Comes To Amazon Fire Devices; No Deal Yet For Roku (But There's A Workaround)

WarnerMedia has yet to clinch a deal to get the service on Roku, the other dominant streaming device — although Roku users now have a workaround for that (more on that below). Together, Amazon and Rok...

How the Pandemic Shaped the CES Agenda This Year

While connected home gadgets have always figured heavily into CES’ agendas in recent years, this year marked a shift in the specific kinds of smart devices people want, according to Jennifer Kent, VP...