'Sesame Street' coming soon to Netflix
Cookie Monster and Elmo celebrate the return of Sesame Street Live! at The Empire State Building on February 18, 2022 in New York City. -- AFP
If you were wondering how to get to "Sesame Street", the beloved children's television show will soon be available on streaming giant Netflix as well as its long-time home at US public broadcaster PBS. Popular characters "Elmo, Cookie Monster, Abby Cadabby, and all their friends are coming to Netflix later this year, with Sesame Street's all-new, reimagined 56th season -- plus 90 hours of previous episodes -- available to audiences worldwide," Sesame Workshop, the non-profit group behind the children's program, said in a statement.
New episodes of the educational staple, which premiered in 1969 to high viewership and glowing reviews, will be "available same day-and-date in the US on PBS stations and PBS KIDS digital platforms" as they will be on Netflix, Sesame Workshop said on Monday. Netflix has exclusive worldwide premiere rights and will also be able to develop video games for the "Sesame Street" brand, it said.
The streamer also confirmed the deal in a statement. Sesame Workshop has been facing financial struggles, with grants disappearing and a lucrative distribution deal with HBO expiring. Under that past agreement, PBS could release new "Sesame Street" episodes only months after they debuted on HBO.
The Netflix deal also follows repeated assaults on public media by US President Donald Trump, including an executive order this month to cut government funding for both NPR and PBS, which he accuses of being biased. National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service are only partly funded by US taxpayers and rely heavily on private donations.
Trump has long had an antagonistic relationship with most mainstream media, including PBS, and once falsely claimed an Arabic version of "Sesame Street" airing in the Middle East cost $20 million. He appears to have conflated the show with a broader educational program that received funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), an AFP Fact Check investigation found. "Sesame Street" parodied the New York real estate developer years before he was elected president, with characters including Mr. Grump, performed by actor Joe Pesci, and a puppet with orange hair, called Donald Grump. — AFP
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