Providing market intelligence for more than 35 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

TLC Presents New 4K TV With Roku OS

Last year, research firm Parks Associates said that Amazon, Apple, Google and Roku accounted 86 percent of streaming devices sold in 2014. Moreover, the firm estimates that 86 million streaming media...

Sprint Launches New Unlimited Freedom Plan With Unlimited Data, Talk And Text

Wireless data usage is growing steadily from 2015 to 2016 as consumers shift data-heavy activities from desktop to mobile. According to Parks Associates’ latest survey data, average monthly wireless d...

New Report Shows Other SVOD Services Creeping Up on Netflix

The report also found that U.S. consumers pay an average of $29 per month for what Parks calls “incremental video-related entertainment beyond pay TV,” and the the biggest chunks of that are movie tic...

Roku and Amazon Fire TV Continue to Gain Market Share; Chromecast and Apple TV Fall Behind

Roku continues to be the market leader for streaming devices, but Amazon’s Fire TV devices have made significant inroads over the last year, according to a report released by market research firm Park...