Parents are saddened at the news of HBO abandoning Sesame Street, leaving the long-running beloved children's program without a platform for airing new episodes.
HBO and Max announced they will no longer stream new episodes as its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, is tailoring its programming strategy more towards adult and family viewers instead of kids.
While new episodes won't be found on the current platform after next year, the 55th season of the beloved show that HBO acquired from PBS in 2015 will be available starting next month, and the older Sesame Street episodes will be licensed through 2027.
Still, that didn't reassure fans about the show's future beyond 2027 when Sesame Street will be without a home to continue educating kids in entertaining and inspiring ways with new episodes.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, a spokesperson for Max stated:
“It has been a wonderful, creative experience working with everyone at 'Sesame Street' on the iconic children’s series and we are thrilled to be able to keep some of the library series on Max in the U.S."
"As we’ve launched Max though and based on consumer usage and feedback, we’ve had to prioritize our focus on stories for adults and families, and so new episodes from Sesame Street, at this time, are not as core to our strategy.”
With the plethora of streaming options available, including Netflix, Peacock, Apple TV+, or Prime Video, it could be a matter of time before at least one of them snatches up the extremely popular show to stream for new audiences.
People are already making predictions.
The executives at Sesame Workshop disclosed that Sesame Street will evolve with a huge makeover for its 56th season.
Steve Youngwood, the CEO of Sesame Workshop, told the Hollywood Reporter the show is seeking to ditch the tried-and-true "magazine" style format in favor of "two longer, more narrative-driven segments" and pair with a new animated series called Tales From 123, which will be presented in between two 11-minute story segments of Sesame Street.
“With any change you have evolutions, and then you have things that are slightly bigger steps, while still staying core to who we are," said Youngwood, adding:
“We felt like this was a moment to step back and think bigger about how we evolve it."
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