How to get to Sesame Street

In celebration of the 40th anniversary of this iconic children's television show, I was reminded of a paper I wrote at Carleton University for my Television course. If I remember correctly, the assignment was to talk about a television show/series and why its production method (public or private) was used. Not only is this a fitting paper for today, but also during a time when the private vs. public television wages on. Enjoy (it's a tad long)!

Sunny day
Sweepin’ the clouds away,
On my way
To where the air is sweet.
Can you tell me how to get,
How to get to Sesame Street?

-Theme from “Sesame Street”

In the late 1960’s television for preschoolers had become “a vast wasteland”, with the content of programs hardly displaying educational value, if any at all. Joan Ganz Clooney, producer for a local television station in New York City, began to question if it was possible to create a new way to produce a children’s television series. “How to get to Sesame Street?” – More importantly how to get to a children’s program that can not only be educational but entertaining for all preschool children. With support from the Carnegie Corporation, and a few others, Sesame Street was born. Yet it is not only the Muppets, or cheerful actors that Sesame Street is celebrated, “Sesame Street, virtually single-handedly, put public television on the map for millions of Americans. Before, public television was a service used by a small segment of the population, usually the better educated and more affluent members. Sesame Street changed this drastically; the show appealed to children and adults from every part of society.” (Lesser, 1974) Throughout this paper, it will become evident that due to the specific conditions of production, Sesame Street became, according to former Vice President Al Gore, “the crowning jewel of [the public broadcasting system]” (Allen & Hill, 2004).

“To promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding among the people of the U.S.” This was Andrew Carnegie’s ambition for his Carnegie Corporation that he described in 1911. Therefore it is not surprising that in June 1966, when Carnegie Corp. had a burgeoning interest in the education and intellectual development of young children as a way to eliminate inequality of opportunity (Lesser, 1974), they made a grant for a study of educational television programs for preschool children, to be administered by Joan Ganz Clooney from WNDT, a local educational television station (Lesser, 1974). With this grant Clooney was able to conduct a 14-18 week study searching for a way to blend education and entertainment for preschoolers. Clooney held that: “The planners of the project insisted that the show be designed not merely as a broadcast series but as an experimental research project that would bring together educational advisors, researchers and television producers as equal partners” (Polsky, 1974).

The search for an executive producer for such a program proposed by Clooney, ended in April 1968 when David Connell from Captain Kangaroo, signed on with the research project. Connell was drawn away from directing back to children’s programming because of a lurking hope that this project might be able to achieve something useful to young children (Lesser, 1974).

In the fall of 1969, Carnegie Corp., along with the Ford Foundation and the U.S. Office of Education, the Children’s Television Workshop (CTW) was created. The CTW was an innovation for children’s programming because it “demonstrated that millions of children, disadvantaged as well as middle-class, can be taught cognitive skills through the medium of television” (Lesser, 1974). Their goal was to create a show that was “primarily intellectual in content but used entertainment as a vehicle and have special concern for the problems of the disadvantaged child” (Lesser, 1974); this goal being the resonating theme of Clooney’s research.

“It was apparent that a commercial station or network would never invest in the production and air time, at the right times of day, that such a program would cost…” (Lesser, 1974). Commercial television spends enormous sums to produce its slick, fast-paced programs, and a series with educational goals would need the same well-produced, expensive appearance to compete for the children’s attention therefore, Clooney and her team decided that instead of following the public-television tradition of timidly pleading for funds for educational projects, they decided that they would either obtain enough funding to go all out or would drop the project completely (Polsky, 1974). Harold Howell, the Education Minister, wrote in a memo stating: “It strikes me that this project represents a fine opportunity for government foundation cooperation to solve a major human problem” (Lesser, 1974). Carnegie was cautious in recognizing that if they accepted more than 50% of the funding from the federal government, they would want a greater hand in the nature of the project” (Lesser, 1974). CTW was going to show television producers that commercial means can be adapted successfully to educational ends.

The lessons learned from Sesame Street demonstrate that it is possible consciously to use television directly to educate children. Public television could therefore be more than something to be endured; it could be attractive, understandable and hip (Lesser, 1974). One of the most notable and innovative successes of public television through the example of Sesame Street was how “the project proved, conclusively, that middle-class and disadvantaged preschool children can learn specific cognitive sills from television and from the same television show” (Lesser, 1974). Due to the roots in the societal goal of equality of opportunity in which children’s programmes were established, they were compelled to reach a large, multiethnic, cross-class audience (Allen & Hill, 2004). For young, disadvantaged children, their impoverished environment may have already affected learning, even before entering school. Television perhaps can help to prepare poor children to take advantage of the education that exists (Polsky, 1974). For example, in a deliberate attempt to stress the importance of providing characters with which inner-city children would identify, the decision was made to cast a black couple (Polsky, 1974).

“For those involved in public television, Sesame Street demonstrated that public TV could attract and hold a mass audience because of the ascension of Sesame Street into American Culture” (Lesser, 1974). The undeniable connection between the success of Sesame Street and public broadcasting demonstrates one of the first examples of how commercial ideas and educational goals can produce an iconic design, specifically in this case for children’s programming. This was the first case where public television became elevated in the public’s eye, whether the audience was a middle-class family or a disadvantaged one. Educators and producers set the curriculum goals together and tailored them towards television; “Our Sesame Street experience suggests that we …can teach children to take another person’s point of view; to cooperate by combining resources, taking turns or dividing labour; to understand certain rules that ensure justice and fair play, such as sharing and reciprocity” (Polsky, 1974) – and now you know how to get to Sesame Street.