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

Voice Recognition Technology Hears Whispers Of M&A

More recently with Siri from Apple, Cortana from Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Google Assistant from Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Alexa from Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) we've seen voice recognition t...

Most Broadband Homes Have Pay-TV and OTT Subscriptions

More than half of all U.S. homes with broadband subscribe to both a pay-TV service and at least one over-the-top video service, according to a new study by Parks Associates. In its OTT Video & TV E...

SVOD MARKET: Survival of the Fittest

Perhaps the bigger surprise is that more haven’t exited the market — yet. “We’re finding that there are many services that are … getting enough subscribers just to be able to be sustainable,” Brett Sa...

Standalone Pay TV Service ARPU Declined 10% From 2016-2018: Research Company

"Traditional pay TV providers (MVPDs) have faced continued subscriber losses due to increasing consumer choice from OTT services, so they are deploying skinny bundles and vMVPD services to create more...