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

Google Home now has a screen — and, soon, Spotify

The small, candle-shaped speaker equipped with the artificial-intelligence personal helper Google Assistant, has sold about 300,000 units since hitting the market in October, according to research and...

Roku is Making TV Speakers, But They Only Work with Roku TVS

The idea behind this is that if your TV sounds better, people will stream more, which is the metric Roku cares most about, Klarke says. Roku likes to say that it's the US's number one streaming conten...

Local News Sources Losing Ground To Live Streaming From Social Media

A growing number of U.S. broadband households is spending more time watching user generated live content on social media, according to a new industry report from Parks Associates. The growth in this s...

Smart Home Systems Need 'Simpler' Setup, Smooth Integration, Parks Event Told

It’s a “burden” on do-it-yourself smart home consumers to have to know and understand the various smart home protocols, said Raya Sevilla, ADT senior vice president-product, at Parks Associates’ Thurs...