Sesame Street

In 1966 Joan Ganz CooneyJoan Ganz CooneyJoan Ganz Cooney is a television producer who originated the preschool educational series Sesame Street. She co-founded the Children's Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop) with Lloyd Morrisett and led the organization for many years.Open the full entry, who worked in public television, hosted a small dinner party at her home that was attended by Lloyd MorrisettLloyd MorrisettLloyd Morrisett (1929–2023) was an American experimental psychologist and foundation executive who co-founded the Children's Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop) with Joan Ganz Cooney and was a co-founder of the children's educational program Sesame Street.Open the full entry, an executive at the Carnegie Corporation of New York. An exploratory meeting at Carnegie followed days later, after which Cooney traveled across the United States and Canada studying preschool television.⁠[1]

In 1968 the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation and the U.S. Office of Education joined together to fund the experiment in using television for preschool education.⁠[2]

Sesame Street premiered on November 10, 1969; actor James Earl Jones was its first celebrity guest.⁠[1]

As a National Educational Television (NET) program, it received a 1969 Peabody Award, whose citation called it a place “Where millions of preschool age children gather for enchanted hours.”⁠[3]

The first international co-productions, Vila Sésamo in Brazil and Plaza Sésamo in Mexico, premiered in 1972, followed by Germany’s Sesamstrasse in 1973.⁠[4]

In 1984 Elmo, the red Muppet who later became widely popular, made his first appearance on the show.⁠[4]

In 1989 Sesame Street, credited to PBS and the Children's Television Workshop, won another Peabody Award for two decades of research-based programming, the citation honoring it “for becoming an American institution of which we can all be proud.”⁠[5]

In August 2015 Sesame Workshop reached a five-year agreement with HBO: from that fall new episodes would air first on HBO and become available to PBS stations and websites nine months later, and the number of new episodes per season would rise from 18 to 35.⁠[6]

In 2017 Julia, Sesame Street’s first autistic Muppet, made her television debut.⁠[4][7]

In 2018 the Peabody Awards gave Sesame Street an Institutional Award, honoring its half century of educational and entertaining programming for children.⁠[8]

In January 2019 economists Melissa S. Kearney and Phillip B. Levine published a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics that used geographic variation in UHF and VHF broadcast reception to study preschool-age children exposed to the show when it aired in 1969. They found that Sesame Street improved school performance, particularly for boys, while estimates for long-term educational and labor market outcomes were generally imprecise.⁠[9]

On December 8, 2019, Sesame Street became the first television show to receive the Kennedy CenterKennedy CenterThe Kennedy Center (John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts) is the national performing arts center in Washington, D.C., designated by Congress in 1964 as a “living memorial” to President John F. Kennedy and opened in 1971; after Donald Trump became chairman of its board in 2025, moves to rename it and close it for renovation became the subject of litigation.Open the full entry Honors; that year’s class also included Sally Field, Linda Ronstadt, Earth, Wind & Fire and Michael Tilson Thomas, and the ceremony was broadcast on CBSCBSCBS is an American commercial broadcast television network. It was founded in 1927 as United Independent Broadcasters, renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1928, and grew from a radio network into a television network under William S. Paley. With ABC and NBC it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks; it has been owned in turn by Westinghouse, Viacom, ViacomCBS and Paramount Global, has been owned by Paramount Skydance Corporation since 2025, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry on December 15.⁠[10]

In 2024 Warner Bros. Discovery, which had carried the show since 2016, decided not to renew its deal for new episodes on HBO and Max; existing episodes were to remain there until 2027.⁠[11]

On May 19, 2025, Netflix announced a streaming agreement for Sesame Street under which new episodes would run on Netflix, PBS and the PBS Kids app on the same day, and select past episodes would be available on Netflix worldwide.⁠[11]

Season 56 premiered on Netflix and PBS KIDS on November 10, 2025 (Sesame Street Day). Its 13 episodes centered on an emotional well-being curriculum and added Tales from 123, a five-minute animated segment led by Elmo and Tango.⁠[12]

In October 2026 Sesame Workshop announced that Season 57 would launch day-and-date on Netflix and PBS KIDS in the United States on November 23, with each episode built around an interactive 11-minute story. The season was to arrive in three volumes, the last two in 2027, and Netflix would offer it in more than 30 languages.⁠[13]

Sesame Street: Official website: https://www.sesamestreet.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[14]

Sesame Workshop: Official website: https://sesameworkshop.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[14]