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

Monetising OTT: The Key Factors

Speaking in a presentation at Broadband World Forum entitled Making money in the new world of video, Brett Sappington, he said that there had been a rush to OTT in the last few years. In the US, for i...

Netflix raises prices on U.S.-based plans

Beyond its immediate effect on subscribers, the price increase foreshadows a future in which the streaming video market is dominated by a handful of players that have captured the majority of a family...

You don’t have to feel guilty about sharing your TV log-in

Last year, research firm Parks Associates found that 16 percent of U.S. households with broadband admitted either borrowing video log-ins or sharing their own credentials. For many people under 40, sh...

Roku pushes into the audio wars with $200 speakers made just for your television

The firm has built a reputation for inexpensive, simple television accessories and leads Amazon’s Fire TV, Google’s Chromecast and the Apple TV in the U.S. market, according to research company Parks...