What would you do to make the show better?
I really am not that displeased with the moderen Sesame Street. I still love the show, and for the same reasons I did back when I first saw it. But there are three things that I am not happy about and would change if I could.
1) Elmo's World - Elmo's World is a nice little show, I have nothing against Elmo or Elmo's world except this. It focuses on one character - Elmo - in one place - Elmo's World (some part of an alternet demention not even on Sesame Street). It is long too and eats up a lot of Sesame Street time. I think Elom's World should break off and become it's own 1/2 hour show, focused for young toddlers (a slightly younger audiance than Sesame Street). Allow Sesame Street to get 15 mins back, and allow the focus of Sesame Street to be broader and less Elmo's World focused.
2) Focused Cast - It seems that the cast of characters on Sesame Street has become focused on 10-20 characters (Big Bird, Oscar, Elmo, Grover, Telly, Count, Cookie, Zoe, Rosita, Snuffy, Bert, Ernie, ect.) I remember as a kid knowing names and faces of over 50 characters and they would show up all the time. About 15 years ago I got a little magazine-like pamphlet (It was for the 20th annivarsary), it was like a Sesame Year Book (just simple pictures of characters with names under them). It was like 8 pages with 15 characters per page (that's almost 150 characters). And I knew and remembered them all! I feel that kids today are not exposed to as huge of a library of characters on a regular basis, as I remembers the show use to have tons of characters always poping in and out (from Sherlock Hemlock, Guy Smiley, Plasido Flamingo Biff, Sully, Forgetfull Jones, Simion Soundman, ect.) There are still lots of muppets that show up but it seems like the show is focused more on a smaller set of characters and there aren't as many secondary or background characters. They still show up from time to time, but not as often or as many as I remember. I'm not saying the current set of characters is bad, or I want to see the old characters from my youth back. But having a bigger and even more diverse set of regular characters seems nice (even if they are new characters). I remember in pre-school that out of the 32 kids in my class, none of us had the same favorite Sesame Street character; now it seems kids' #1 favorites are either Elmo, Zoe, Big Bird, Oscar, Ernie, or Cookie (with some exceptions).
3) Less new songs - The show seems to not have less new songs as before. And when they do have a "new song" on the show it is usally a remake or cover of an old sesame song. Even the Elmo's World's theme was taken from an exisiting Sesame song. I would like to hear new songs that will become future staples of a Sesame soundtrack.
That's all I really have against the current Sesame Street. Nothing big, nothing that if it didn't change I would be upset over, but things that if they did change I would be happy to see. Over all I like the modern Sesame Street. And in 10 years I hope to see it still on the air, and still teaching and entertaining people all over the world.