Influence of Sesame Street
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.
According to writer Michael Davis, Sesame Street is "perhaps the most vigorously researched, vetted, and fretted-over program".[1] By 2001, there were over 1,000 research studies regarding its efficacy, impact, and effect on American culture. Two landmark summative evaluations, conducted by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in 1970 and 1971, demonstrated that Sesame Street had a significant educational impact on its viewers. Additional studies conducted throughout the show's history demonstrated that the show continued to have a positive effect on its young viewers.
Sesame Street has also been the subjects of many controversies throughout its long run on television. In 1970, a commission in Mississippi voted to exclude the show from its state educational TV programming. The controversy surrounding the show stemmed from cultural and historical reasons regarding children and television's effect on them. Latino and feminists groups criticized Sesame Street for its depictions of some groups, but its producers have worked to address their concerns throughout the years. By 2009, Sesame Street had received 118 Emmy Awards, more than any other television series.
Ratings
When Sesame Street premiered in 1969, it aired on only 67.6% of American televisions, but it earned a 3.3
In the winter of 1970, partly as a response to criticism that they were not reaching their intended audience, the CTW conducted a poll of four urban neighborhoods in New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. The results of the poll were positive in three out of the four neighborhoods and confirmed the show's high viewership.[4] Sesame Street's high ratings increased during its second season, and Nielsen reported high audience loyalty.[5] Gerald S. Lesser, CTW's first advisory board chair, reported rumors about the show becoming a fad among college students.[6] Its ratings steadily increased for the first five seasons, and Nielsen reported that Sesame Street had the highest ratings of any PBS program.[7] In 1985, the Workshop estimated that 20% of its regular viewers consisted of "adult-only households".[8]
By the show's tenth anniversary in 1979, 9 million American children under the age of six were watching Sesame Street daily. Four out of five children had watched it over a six-week period, and 90% of children from low-income inner-city homes regularly viewed the show.
The show's ratings significantly decreased in the early 1990s, when children' viewing habits and the television marketplace had changed. In 1969, the choices in children's programming were limited, but the growth of the home-video industry during the 1980s and the boom in children's programming during the '90s on cable channels, like those on
By 2006, Sesame Street had become "the most widely viewed children's television show in the world", with 20
Effect
According to Davis, Sesame Street is "perhaps the most vigorously researched, vetted, and fretted-over program".[1] By 2001, there were over 1,000 research studies regarding its efficacy, impact, and effect on American culture.[17] The CTW solicited the Educational Testing Service (ETS) to conduct its summative research.[18] ETS' two "landmark"[19] summative evaluations, conducted in 1970 and 1971, demonstrated that Sesame Street had a significant educational impact on its viewers.[20] These studies provided the majority of the early educational effects of Sesame Street and have been cited in other studies of the effects of television on young children.[19][note 1] Additional studies conducted throughout Sesame Street's history demonstrated that the show continued to have a positive effect on its young viewers.[note 2]
Lesser believed that Sesame Street research "may have conferred a new respectability upon the studies of the effects of visual media upon children".[21] He also believed that the show had the same effect on the prestige in the television industry of producing shows for children.[21] Historian Robert Morrow, in his book Sesame Street and the Reform of Children's Television, which chronicled the show's influence on children's television and on the television industry as a whole, reported that many critics of commercial television saw Sesame Street as a "straightforward illustration for reform".[22] Les Brown, a writer for Variety, saw in Sesame Street "a hope for a more substantial future" for television.[22]
The networks responded by creating more high-quality television programs, but that many saw them as "appeasement gestures".[23] In spite of the CTW's effectiveness in creating a popular show, commercial television "made only a limited effort to emulate CTW's methods", and did not use a curriculum or evaluate what children learned from them.[24] Morrow reported that by the mid-1970s, commercial television abandoned their experiments with creating better children's programming.[25] Other critics hoped that Sesame Street, with its depiction of a functioning, multicultural community, would nurture racial tolerance in its young viewers.[26]
As critic Richard Roeper has stated, perhaps one of the strongest indicators of the influence of Sesame Street have been the enduring rumors and urban legends surrounding the show and its characters, especially about Bert and Ernie.[27]
Critical reception
Sesame Street was praised from its debut in 1969. Newsday reported that several newspapers and magazines had written "glowing" reports about CTW and co-creator
"Sesame Street is...with lapses, the most intelligent and important program in television. That is not anything much yet".
-Renata Adler, The New Yorker, 1972[32]
Sesame Street was not without its detractors, however. In May 1970, a state commission in Mississippi voted to exclude to host the show on its state educational TV network owing to concerns over the show's inclusive racial message. A member of the commission told The New York Times, that "Mississippi was not yet ready" for the show's integrated cast.[42] Cooney called the commission's decision "a tragedy for both the white and black children of Mississippi".[15] The Mississippi commission later reversed its decision 22 days later, after the vote had made national news.[15]
According to
The "most important"
Head Start director Edward Zigler was probably Sesame Street's most vocal critic in the show's early years. He withdrew Head Start's funding of the show, becoming the first of CTW's original investors to do so. Morrow suggested that the basis of Zigler's criticism was concern that the federal government would transfer their funding of Head Start to CTW.[49] Also according to Morrow, these studies were utilized by critics in Sesame Street's later years, especially by child development psychologists Jerome and Dorothy G. Singer, who insisted the television shortened children's attention spans, and by author Neil Postman in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, who believed that television could not teach children.[50] Postman claimed that Sesame Street also introduced children to a shallow pop culture, undermined American education, and relieved parents of their responsibility of teaching their children how to read.[51]
Since federal funds had been used to produce the show, more segments of the population insisted upon being represented on Sesame Street. Morrow credited CTW's commitment to multiculturalism as one source for their conflicts with the leadership of minority groups, especially Latino groups and feminists. These conflicts were resolved when the CTW added or substituted offending segments and characters. By 1977, the cast consisted of two African American women, one of whom was single, two African American men, a Chicano man, two white men, an American Indian woman, a Puerto Rican woman, and a Deaf white woman.[52]
![Handsome Latino man in his late sixties, smiling at the camera and wearing a striped shirt.](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/Emilio_Delgado.jpg/220px-Emilio_Delgado.jpg)
Latino groups criticized the show for the lack of Hispanic characters during its early years.[15] A committee of Hispanic activists, commissioned by the CTW in 1970, called Sesame Street "racist" and said that the show's bilingual aspects were of "poor quality and patronizing".[44] According to Morrow, Cooney admitted that the show's bilingual elements were "not well thought out".[53] By 1971, the CTW hired Hispanic actors, production staff, and researchers, and by the mid-70s, Morrow reported that "the show included Chicano and Puerto Rican cast members, films about Mexican holidays and foods, and cartoons that taught Spanish words".[54] In 1989, Sesame Street created a four-year "race relations curriculum"[55] that focused on introducing its viewers to various cultural backgrounds.
According to Morrow, change regarding how women and girls were depicted on Sesame Street occurred slowly. CTW's research staff, which were mostly made up of women, worked with the mostly male production staff to raise their consciousnesses about how women and girls were portrayed in their scripts.[58] Another source of friction between the CTW and feminists were the lack of female Muppets, for which they held Jim Henson responsible, as well as his organization of all-male puppeteers, who tended to create male characters. The demanding production schedule tended to attract only men, and Henson expressed his opinion that women were incapable of withstanding it. Gikow believed that the difficulty creating breakout Muppet characters was due to children's viewing styles: girls have tended to become attached to male characters they like, but boys did not tend to form the same attachments to female characters.[59] The show's inventory of material, some of which many feminists found sexist and which were shown over and over, were slowly replaced by new, less sexist segments.[60] As more female Muppets performers like Fran Brill,[note 4] Stephanie D'Abruzzo, and Leslie Carrara-Rudolph were hired and trained, stronger female characters like Abby Cadabby were created.[59] As an interesting contrast, Sesame Street was also chastised by a Louisiana critic for the presence of strong single women on the show.[62]
In 2003, one of Sesame Street's
Footnotes
- ^ According to Palmer and his colleague Shalom M. Fisch, these studies were responsible for securing funding for the show over the next several years.[20]
- ^ For a discussion of these studies, see: Gikow, pp. 284-285; "G" is For Growing: Thirty Years of Research on Children and Sesame Street, pp. 147—230.
- ^ See Lesser, pp. 175—201 for his response to the early critics of Sesame Street.
- ^ Brill developed a solution to the height difference between her and the taller male puppeteers: wearing boots with 4–5 inches of platform glued to the soles.[61]
Notes
- ^ a b Davis, p. 357
- ^ Brown, Les (December 24, 1969). "Sesame Street: Wunderkind". Variety. Quoted in Davis, p. 197.
- ^ Morrow, p. 117
- ^ Morrow, pp. 142—144
- ^ Lesser, p. 205
- ^ Lesser, p. 170
- ^ Morrow, p. 118
- ^ Rothenberg, Fred (December 23, 1985). "New 'Sesame Street' Star Adds Adoption Topic to Show". The Free Lance-Star. Retrieved September 20, 2019.
- ^ Davis, p. 277
- ISBN 978-0-8058-3395-9.
- ^ Salamon, Julie (June 9, 2002). "Children's TV Catches up with How Kids Watch". New York Times. Archived from the original on September 3, 2018. Retrieved October 10, 2019.
- ^ Weiss, Joanna (October 19, 2005). "New Character Joins PBS". The Boston Globe.
- ^ a b Friedman, Michael Jay (August 4, 2006). "Sesame Street Educates and Entertains Internationally". America.gov. U.S. Department of State Bureau of International Information Programs. Archived from the original on October 21, 2012. Retrieved September 20, 2019.
- ISBN 978-0-8058-3395-9.
- ^ a b c d Guernsey, Lisa (May 23, 2009). "How Sesame Street Changed the World". Newsweek. Archived from the original on April 12, 2016. Retrieved September 20, 2019.
- ^ "Leaving the neighborhood: 'Sesame Street' muppets to travel across America next year". Archived from the original on June 19, 2020. Retrieved September 20, 2019.
- ^ Cooney, p. xii
- ^ Miekle, p. 85
- ^ a b Mielke, p. 88
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8058-3395-9.
- ^ a b Lesser, p. 235
- ^ a b Morrow, p. 122
- ^ Morrow, p. 127
- ^ Morrow, p. 130
- ^ Morrow, p. 132
- ^ Morrow, p. 124
- ISBN 978-1-56414-554-3.
- ^ Seligsohn, Leo. (February 9, 1970). "Sesame Street". New York Newsday. Quoted in Davis, p. 197.
- ^ a b c d e f g Kanfer, Stefan (November 23, 1970). "Who's Afraid of Big, Bad TV?". Time. Archived from the original on June 4, 2011. Retrieved October 8, 2019.
- ^ Morrow, pp. 119—120
- S2CID 140369989.
- ^ Lesser, p. 165
- ^ Morrow, p. 119
- ^ Davis, p. 198
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 30, 2022 – via NYTimes.com.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 30, 2022 – via NYTimes.com.
- ^ "TV Guide Names Top 50 Shows". CBS News. Associated Press. April 26, 2002. Archived from the original on August 2, 2002. Retrieved October 9, 2011.
- ^ Fretts, Bruce; Roush, Matt (December 23, 2013). "TV Guide Magazine's 60 Best Series of All Time". Archived from the original on September 6, 2016. Retrieved October 9, 2019.
- ^ "2009 Sesame Workshop". Peabody Awards. Archived from the original on October 9, 2019. Retrieved October 9, 2019.
- ^ Turchiano, Danielle (April 18, 2019). "'Barry,' 'Killing Eve,' 'Pose' Among 2019 Peabody Winners". Variety. Archived from the original on September 29, 2019. Retrieved October 9, 2019.
- ^ Jagannathan, Meera (March 16, 2017). "President Trump wants to cut funding to PBS — here are the times 'Sesame Street' roasted him". New York Daily News. Archived from the original on April 10, 2019. Retrieved October 9, 2019.
- ^ "Mississippi Agency Votes for a TV Ban on 'Sesame Street'". New York Times. May 3, 1970. p. 54. Archived from the original on December 10, 2019. Retrieved October 10, 2019.
- ^ Lesser, pp. 174—175
- ^ a b c Morrow, p. 3
- ^ Morrow, p. 146
- ^ Morrow, pp. 146—147
- ^ Morrow, p. 145
- ^ Morrow, p. 98
- ^ Morrow, p. 147
- ^ Morrow, p. 149
- ^ Davis, p. 200
- ^ Morrow, pp. 157—158
- ^ Morrow, p. 154
- ^ Morrow, p. 155
- ISBN 978-0-8058-3395-9.
- ^ Gikow, p. 142
- ^ Davis, p. 213
- ^ a b Morrow, p. 156
- ^ a b Gikow, p. 143
- ^ Morrow, pp. 156—157
- ^ Gikow, p. 56
- ^ Hellman, Peter (November 23, 1987). "Street Smart: How Big Bird & Co. Do It". New York Magazine. 20 (46): 52.
- ^ Knowlton, Linda Goldstein and Linda Hawkins Costigan (producers) (2006). The World According to Sesame Street (documentary). Participant Productions.
- ^ "HIV-positive Muppet Appointed as "Champion for Children"". UNICEF. November 24, 2003. Archived from the original on November 12, 2019. Retrieved October 10, 2019.
References
- Davis, Michael (2008). Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street. New York: Viking Penguin. ISBN 978-0-670-01996-0.
- Gikow, Louise A. (2009). Sesame Street: A Celebration—Forty Years of Life on the Street. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers. ISBN 978-1-57912-638-4.
- Lesser, Gerald S. (1974). Children and Television: Lessons From Sesame Street. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0-394-71448-6.
- Mielke, Keith W. (2001). "A Review of Research on the Educational and Social Impact of Sesame Street". In Fisch, Shalom M. & Truglio, Rosemarie T. (eds.). "G" is for Growing: Thirty Years of Research on Children and Sesame Street. Mahweh, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8058-3394-2.
- Morrow, Robert W. (2006). Sesame Street and the Reform of Children's Television. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-8230-2.