In 1968, the show got an initial budget of $8 million ($59.45 million today), the bulk of which came from the federal government, for about 130 hours of television per year. The late Jon Stone (white shirt) began working for “Sesame Street” after Joan Ganz Cooney tapped him - and he identified with her values. What followed was a Carnegie Foundation study that found children between the ages of 3 and 5 watched television 54.1 hours per week - only the hours they slept exceeded that total. “To me it was clear the kids just adored the medium, so why not see if it could educate them?” “I knew the answer right away,” says Cooney in the film, adding that American children had nothing else to watch on television but commercials, to the degree many memorized the song lyrics from a popular Budweiser ad. Morrisett later approached his friend Cooney - who had produced documentaries with Channel 13 in New York and had supported the civil rights movement - at a dinner party she hosted and asked whether this possibility could be made a reality. The ‘Sesame Street’ set used to have a ‘No hablo español’ sign “And I wondered whether there was a possibility that television could be used to help children with school.” “We found that those children would enter school three months behind, and by the end of first grade, be a year behind - and get further and further behind,” says Morrisett in the film, which will be released on video-on-demand platforms on May 7, then on HBO in December. A new film explores how the founders of “Sesame Street” and its crew broke barriers to create educational programming and promote diversity in subtle ways. “It was like a ripple effect: pulling people in until they got a dream team of individuals who used the power of television and creativity and really purposeful intention to do something that had never been done before,” Ellen Scherer Crafts, who produced the documentary with her husband Trevor Crafts, told The Post.Īdded Trevor: “We still have a show that pushes those boundaries and continues to experiment and try new things, and be very socially relevant.”Ĭhildren’s Television Workshop (now known as Sesame Workshop), the organization that debuted “Sesame Street” in 1969, was co-founded by Carnegie Foundation psychologist Lloyd Morrisett and television producer Joan Ganz Cooney, now both 91.Īt times of greater racial and socioeconomic divisions in the late 1960s, the two set their focus on disadvantaged children - primarily inner-city black children. “Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street,” in select theaters nationwide on Friday and inspired by a Michael Davis book, explores how a team of “rebels” had the wild idea to educate kids through the democratizing medium of TV - and create a world inspired by the civil rights movement that still resonates nearly 52 years on. The revolution will be televised - on a kids’ show, no less, according to a new documentary. ‘Sesame Street’ co-creator Lloyd Morrisett dead at 93 ![]() We found last-minute NYC ‘Sesame Street Live’ tickets. ![]() ![]() ![]() tourists as Cookie MonsterĬops warn of ‘creepy’ Cookie Monster terrorizing town: ‘Steer clear’ NYC’s ‘anti-Semitic Elmo’ now tormenting Calif.
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