Providing Market Intelligence for 40 Years

In The News

A Muppet always pays his debts – Sesame Street finds new home behind paywall

Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street, announced a programming deal that will send Sesame Street from its longtime publicly-subsidized home on PBS to the corporate Time Warner-owned home of Westeros on HBO. According to a press release from Sesame Workshop, the deal includes:

  • a five-year order of 35 episodes per season (nearly twice its current 18 episodes per season);
  • 150 library episodes;
  • a muppet-based spinoff series;
  • an additional educational series;
  • library episodes from Sesame Workshop-produced shows Pinky Dinky Doo; and,
  • 2009 reboot of the 1970s educational series The Electric Company.

New episodes of Sesame Street will begin airing on HBO as early as this fall.

Exact financial details of the agreement were not immediately released. On the surface, this looked like a surprise move. After all, aside from movies, HBO is known primarily for its adult-themed programs like Game of Thrones, The Wire, Girls, and True Detective because FCC governance is less strict on premium television. However, the move benefits both Sesame Workshop and HBO.

From the article "A Muppet always pays his debts – Sesame Street finds new home behind paywall" by Glenn Hower.

Previously In The News

Tubi TV’s Thomas Ahn-Hicks On AVOD, The Competition, And The Future Of OTT

Tubi TV is having a pretty good 2017 so far: the latest Parks Associates study proclaimed the ad-supported service to be one of the fastest-growing apps in its space. So morale was high when I spoke t...

Startup Talk: AT&T Joins Verizon With Announcement Of 5G Network Roadmap, Speeds 100x Faster

Dallas-based marketing research firm Parks Associates has released new mobile research showing 86% of U.S. broadband households now own a smartphone. The smartphone markets in European nations, like i...

Providers Fine-tune Their Business Models As A La Carte Streaming Services Proliferate

Those who prefer streaming video-on-demand aren’t shy about sharing passwords. About 6 percent of U.S. broadband households use an over-the-top video service paid by someone living outside of the hous...

TV Producers May Start Making You Wait For New Shows Online

As services like Netflix and Hulu boom, he said, television companies are looking for ways they can hold onto more of those streaming revenues themselves. The changes are especially noticeable at H...