Sesame Street

Sesame Street
Also known as	PBS Kids Sesame Street (Series 33-36,41-present)
Genre	Children Educational
Created by	Joan Ganz Cooney Lloyd Morrisett (1969-2021)
Theme music composer	Joe Raposo Bruce Hart
Opening theme	"Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street?"
Ending theme	"Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street?" (instrumental, seasons 1-45,57-present) "Smarter, Stronger, Kinder" (season 46-55) Just Imagine (instrumental, series 56)
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	57
No. of episodes	4735
Production
Executive producers	David Connell (1969–1972) Jon Stone (1972–1978) Al Hyslop (1978–1980) (credited as "producer" in season 10) Dulcy Singer (1980–1993) Michael Loman (1993–2002) Lewis Bernstein (2003–2005) Carol-Lynn Parente (2006–present) Brown Johnson (2017–2019) Benjamin Lehmann (2018–present)
Producer	Joe Stone (1969-1972)
Production locations	Reeves Teletape Studios (1969–1993) Kaufman Astoria Studios (1993–present)
Running time	55-60 minutes (1969-2014) 25-27 minutes (2014-present)
Production company	Sesame Workshop
Original release
Network	NET (1969–1970) PBS (1970–present) PBS Kids (2002-2015) HBO (2016-2025) Netfix (2025-present)
Release	November 10, 1969 (1969-11-10) – present

Sesame Street is an American educational children's television series with many Muppets (puppet characters) and non-Muppet characters (human characters). There are also many animated characters. The show deals with topics like music, alphabet, numbers, and teaching children basics in learning, as well as more serious issues like death, divorce, HIV/AIDS, autism, and foster care. Part of the profits go to an international project for children's schools.

The show has been on TV since November 10, 1969. Jim Henson made the Muppets and a lot of writers and puppeteers worked together to make the show. The Muppets were used afterwards in a different show called The Muppet Show. Sesame Street has been on TV in 120 countries all over the world. More than 4,000 episodes have been made over 50 seasons. One unique feature of the show is that the episode number appears at the start of each episode.

For most of its history, Sesame Street had been shown on PBS in 1970.

In late 2015, in response to "sweeping changes in the media business" and as part of a five-year programming deal, premium television service HBO began airing first-run episodes of Sesame Street. The episodes became available on PBS stations and websites nine months after they aired on HBO. The deal allowed Sesame Workshop to produce more episodes—increasing from 18 to 35 per season—and to create a spinoff series with the Sesame Street Muppets, and a new educational series.

At its 50th anniversary in 2019, Sesame Street had produced over 4,500 episodes, two feature-length movies (Follow That Bird in 1985 and The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland in 1999), 35 TV specials, 200 home videos, and 180 albums. Beginning that year, digitized versions of the show's full archive of episodes were donated to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, viewable on site at the library's locations, with five episodes available for viewing online. Its YouTube channel has over 24 million subscribers. It was announced in October 2019 that first-run episodes would move to HBO Max beginning with the show's 51st season in 2020. In August 2022, HBO Max removed 200 older episodes of the series from its library after originall offering around 650 episodes. On December 13, 2024, it was announced that Max would not be renewing their contract to make episodes of Sesame Street, meaning 2025 would be the last year for episodes made with Max. Episodes will be in the HBO Max streaming library until 2027. A spokesperson for Sesame Workshop stated: "We will continue to invest in our best-in-class programming and look forward to announcing our new distribution plans in the coming months, ensuring that 'Sesame Street' reaches as many children as possible for generations to come."

On May 19, 2025, it was announced that Sesame Street would begin to air new episodes on Netflix worldwide and would once again premiere episodes on PBS, with new episodes being released on both platforms on the same day, as well as past seasons. This move would also include acquiring 90 hours of older episodes by Netflix. Season 56 of Sesame Street premiered on Netflix and PBS on November 10, 2025.

Beginning in January 2026, under a separate agreement, the official YouTube channel began to host the largest collection of older library episodes, including hundreds of classic episodes. Among the episodes of the series uploaded to the Sesame Street YouTube channel as part of the new agreement is the first episode of the series.

In April 2026, free streaming service Tubi added 250 older episodes to its platform, with the plan to update ten percent of them every quarter.

The Muppets

• Big Bird is an 8-foot-tall yellow dino-bird. He was the first Muppet to appear on Sesame Street. His best friend is Snuffy, a reddish-brown Snuffleupagus. He was assumed to be imaginary by the rest of the cast until the creators revealed him due to hearing about reports of sexual abuse cases of children. He was performed by Caroll Spinney (1969–2018) and Matt Vogel (1997–present).
• Oscar the Grouch is a green grouch who lives in a garbage can with his pet worm Slimey and his pet elephant Fluffy. He is often in a bad mood and he loves everything that other people hate: mud, dirt, etc. He has a girlfriend named Grundgetta. He was performed by Caroll Spinney (1969–2018) and Eric Jacobson (2015–present).
• Bert and Ernie are two roommates. Ernie is more active and always ready to play a game or make a mess. Bert is an often boring grouch who likes to read; he likes things to be clean, neat and loves pigeons.
• Zoe is a female yellow-orange monster. She has a rock named Rocco and loves ballet. She is also Elmo's best friend.
• Rosita is a bilingual turquoise female Monster from Mexico who speaks both English and Spanish. She also plays the guitar. She is performed by Carmen Osbahr.
• Count von Count (The Count) is a number-counting lavender vampire from Transylvania.
• Prairie Dawn is a driven young girl who loves to write and direct pageants featuring her friends.
• Elmo is a small red monster who has a falsetto voice and lives with his goldfish named Dorothy. He speaks in third person and got his own Sesame Street segment, Elmo's World in 1998.

Other Muppets for Sesame Street include a girl fairy named Abby Cadabby, Murray, his lamb named Ovejita, Juila, and the Two-Headed Monster. Not only Muppets play in the show but also a diverse cast of human characters who live with the Muppets.

Related pages

• Sesame Workshop
• Mo Willems

Notes

References

Other websites

• Muppet Central

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