On Thursday the 86th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade will work its way through the streets of Manhattan. Millions of people will line the parade route. Millions more will be watching at home. And for the 38th year in a row, they’ll see Big Bird, Cookie Monster and countless other beloved Muppets making their way down the avenues on Sesame Street’s parade float. Read More
Sesame Workshop’s mission is to harness the educational power of media to help all children the world over reach their highest potential. Kevin Clash has helped us achieve that mission for 28 years, and none of us, especially Kevin, want anything to divert our attention from our focus on serving as a leading educational organization. Unfortunately, the controversy surrounding Kevin’s personal life has become a distraction that none of us wants, and he has concluded that he can no longer be effective in his job and has resigned from Sesame Street. This is a sad day for Sesame Street.
We are pleased that this matter has been brought to a close, and we are happy that Kevin can move on from this unfortunate episode.
In June of this year, Sesame Workshop received a communication from a then 23 year old man who alleged that he had a relationship beginning when he was 16 years old with Kevin Clash, a Sesame Workshop puppeteer who performs as Elmo.
We took the allegation very seriously and took immediate action. We met with the accuser twice and had repeated communications with him. We met with Kevin, who denied the accusation. We also conducted a thorough investigation and found the allegation of underage conduct to be unsubstantiated. Although this was a personal relationship unrelated to the workplace, our investigation did reveal that Kevin exercised poor judgment and violated company policy regarding internet usage and he was disciplined.
Kevin insists that the allegation of underage conduct is false and defamatory and he is taking actions to protect his reputation. We have granted him a leave of absence to do so.
Elmo is bigger than any one person and will continue to be an integral part of Sesame Street to engage, educate and inspire children around the world, as it has for 40 years.
After Hurricane Sandy struck, Sesame Workshop sprang into action. Elmo took to the airwaves to calm children and help them understand the disorder surrounding them. We used our social media outlets to make sure as many affected families as possible were aware of the resources and tools offered by our hurricane outreach kit. And this Friday we’re airing a very special episode of Sesame Street. Read More
Ed. Note: Susan Tofte is Sesame Workshop’s archivist.
How would you update a classic? Take a treasured story from one era and spruce it up for a new century’s readers?
Sesame Workshop has produced over 1200 books in a variety of formats since the early 1970s. Part of the philosophy of our publishing group is the willingness to tell stories in whatever formats will attract and reach preschoolers. Animated book apps and e-books are the most recent formats in which Sesame Street characters have come to life. For the Workshop, an eagerness to create books in emerging digital formats is tempered by the need to balance innovation with our mission of education. It is a delicate balancing act, but one that the Workshop’s publishing group has pulled off time and time again. Read More
When it comes to Sesame Workshop’s budget, there are a lot of numbers out there. The Count may get it, but almost everyone else is confused.
Sesame Street receives, on average, about $1.5 million from PBS each year. You may have read that PBS gives us $7 million or $8 million each year. That’s an easy mistake to make. But we’re Sesame Street, and we’re going to do what we do best.
We’re going to explain it.
Not-for-profit organizations are required to publish their informational returns, IRS Form 990, on their websites. It shows where the organization’s money comes from and where it goes to. If you look at our Form 990s from years past and go to Part VIII (page nine), there’s a “Statement of Revenue.” That’s where our money comes from.
The first part of that has a line – 1e, if you’re following along — called “Government grants (contributions).” In our fiscal year 2010 (ending June 30, 2010), that number was just under $8 million; in fiscal year 2011, it was about $7 million. Many people are looking at that number and thinking “PBS!”
But PBS funding for Sesame Street is not included in that number. Let’s break it down. We’ll use the fiscal year 2011 number because it’s our most recent.
The $7 million came primarily from three sources:
* About $1.6 million from the Department of Education, for The Electric Company.
* Another $4.4 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development, facilitating the production of local educational initiatives in places like Nigeria, Indonesia, and Bangladesh.
* And another $700,000 or so from the Department of Health and Human Services, for our Healthy Habits for Life initiative.
But PBS funding for Sesame Street is not there.
Why?
PBS is funded, in part, by an organization called the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (or CPB), which you’ve probably heard mentioned on PBS shows for decades. CPB is “a private corporation funded by the American people.” CPB gives money to PBS and to NPR, among others. A lot of that is on a project basis — for example, a few years ago, CPB gave us money so that we could bring back The Electric Company in order to help bridge the literacy gap among underprivileged children in early elementary school.
So where’s the PBS’s financial support for Sesame Street appear on our Form 990? It’s part of line 1f – “All other contributions, gifts, grants, and similar amounts not included above.” It includes all the money we get from our corporate sponsors who have partnered with us to bring our educational content to children around the world, and, yes, it includes PBS, too.
Of the nearly $32 million on that line, $1.5 million is from PBS. PBS pays us a $4 million licensing fee to produce and deliver about two dozen new hour-long episodes of Sesame Street each year. And we give part of it back.
Our corporate sponsors and product licensees bring in revenue so that we can meet our mission, and we could not do that without the reach of PBS. So each year, we return about $2.5 million of that $4 million to PBS.
$4 million minus $2.5 million? As a Sesame Street fan, you can quickly figure out that each year, we receive $1.5 million from PBS.
But let’s be perfectly clear, were it not for PBS and CPB, Sesame Street would not exist. From initial government investment, we’ve built a financially sustainable model through public private partnerships. And today, we continue to rely on PBS to deliver on our mission of helping all children reach their highest potential. It is through PBS and their member stations, that we are able to provide commercial free educational programming to all US children, particularly those who need Sesame Street the most.
Cinemagic students during a class at Sesame Workshop
Ed. Note: Robert Harvey is a student at De La Salle College in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he writes music.
I recently attended an educational workshop at Sesame Workshop in New York as part of an international film festival hosted by Cinemagic, a youth charity organization based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Cinemagic aims to eliminate societal boundaries by bringing people tuogether from all backgrounds who want to break into the film and music industry. It offers opportunities like the one I received: I came over to New York and attended film festivals and classes at places like Sesame Workshop. Read More
Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads, and, as is our general practice, have requested that both campaigns remove Sesame Street characters and trademarks from their campaign materials.
A few days before the first Presidential debate I talked with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien about Sesame, not knowing that with all the issues we face in this country, the Presidential election would come down to a referendum on Big Bird! But that is what Governor Romney made it when he said he liked Big Bird, but would cut PBS funding.
I had tried to explain that Sesame Workshop as an independent, non-profit organization cannot just depend on PBS for funding, and that most of our revenue comes from private contributions and from licensing fees from our characters.
But that’s only half the story. Sesame Workshop has created a financially sustainable model to fund production of our educational programming here and around the world. But Sesame Street would not exist were it not for PBS and its local stations, which is the distribution system for Big Bird and friends to reach all children across the United States, particularly the low income children who need us most.
There have been over 80 million graduates of Sesame Street in the U.S. since 1969, and longitudinal studies have shown that children who grew up watching Sesame Street had 16% higher grade point averages throughout high school!
A CNN poll said 7% of the American public think that PBS gets as much as half the US budget! 30% think it’s 5%. In reality it’s 0.014%. Let’s keep that in perspective and also not forget the return on that investment: millions of children who have benefited from early childhood education brought to them by the letters, P. B. S.!
