Does Sesame Street still air classic segments?

[Flaky Pudding]

I'm just curious if there is a place where I can watch classic Sesame Street segments besides Internet or DVD.

 

[MikaelaMuppet]

Sprout.

 

[JLG]

They pretty much don't. Starting with the 40th season, they basically closed the book on their history and started with a clean slate, forever changing the very meaning of the words "Sesame Street," which up to that point had always been defined by a mixed grab bag of old and new.

 

[Drtooth]

They've started much earlier than that. But quite honestly, why would they need to? The show is fine line in the sand for kids, and the only ones who care about the older segments are older fans. Most of the classic stuff is available online and DVD. As early as the 90's, they were starting to edge out the 70's stuff... the last of it actually aired (if you can believe it) in season 33. Nowadays, everything that isn't HD (though some of it does still sneak in when they're desperate for filler) is basically tossed to the wayside. What I specifically dislike about it is the fact that they have so little HD footage that they constantly have to rerun the same parody segments in the same season (another rant for another time).

 

[Oscarfan]

I really hate the argument people have here that's basically "The show today sucks because it doesn't show any old clips anymore." In all honesty, the show was better then than it is now, but the show still makes a lot of great stuff, some of it being to hold its own against the classics ("I Love My Hair", "I Wonder").

 

[Drtooth]

I really hate the argument people have here that's basically "The show today sucks because it doesn't show any old clips anymore." In all honesty, the show was better then than it is now, but the show still makes a lot of great stuff, some of it being to hold its own against the classics ("I Love My Hair", "I Wonder").

I don't think that's so much the discussion here, but I agree completely. Logically, we saw sketches from the 70's reused in the 80's, sketches from the 80's reused in the 90's... and so on. We've been seeing some 00's stuff even now. There is a tradition of retiring older skits since the 80's episodes, so that's far from new. I also do not think that lack of older skits (which most of are available anywhere) means a lack of quality.

Not to say that newer episodes don't have some problems, but not seeing a 1970's Ernie and Bert skit isn't one of them. Not seeing Ernie and Bert segments produced for the show they only show internationally, yes.

 

[JLG]

My regret isn't so much that the old stuff is gone (although I do wish that we could be sharing those things en masse with today's children the way six or seven generations of viewers all shared similar memories with each other for so long). It's that the new stuff that's taken its place just isn't as smart or imaginative, on the whole. Sure, some of it's funny and inventive, and the Muppet sketches are always fun, but on the whole the tone is much less iconoclastic and much more "safe." Even generic.
The combination of unique talents that fused together to produce that wonderfully eclectic mishmash we called "Sesame Street" are largely deceased, retired or have moved on. And even if they weren't, the new format (and the guidelines imposed on it through circumstance) don't really allow for the same kind of freewheeling creativity that used to just run wild before.

Even if none of that were true, though, at heart I admit it IS hard to get used to the fact that "Sesame Street" doesn't "mean" the same thing it used to mean. Until the late 90s it used to describe a barely-changing fusion of new discoveries and old, familiar memories----all in a random, unpredictable assortment. That just used to be what the name "meant." Today it describes something completely different.

 

[Drtooth]

I don't think that's the problem at all. In fact, not only are there a lot of well written, smart skits... they're actually quite biting too. The Spider-Monster skit alone has a level of snarky take that-iness that's almost out of character (in a good way). The real problem is this:

Sesame Street has to take it upon itself to shoulder the burden of whatever study comes back about what kids aren't learning enough of in school. Singlehandedly, I might add. When the truth is, they were indeed covering all of those topics before, just not heavy handed with initiatives. That and the whole making international programming they absorb into the show in the guise of (in their words) competing with (and copying) the blocks of children's programming on other networks. You know, making the show an umbrella title for a series of smaller shows, like what they actually do internationally. Then there's the whole over-reliance on celebrity and parody segments which only exist to get parents to actually watch with their kids and to act as publicity for the show to stand out in an insane glut of for profit preschool programming. Each howlingly inferior to Sesame Street, even on a bad day.

Add to the growing budget problems, the meager 26 episodes a season, and the ubiquitous competition from every kid's channel and it's mother with lower quality, higher pop psychology/yet to be discredited educational studies and you got the real problem right there. A show that forces one subject at a time a season that has a few episodes and fills those up with celebrity and parody segments to keep reminding everyone the show is still on, rather than pure comedy/comedy with some educational content segments. And rerunning those to get the most mileage out of them.

Things aren't like they were in the 70's, or 80's. And most of the old school fans find the 90's as the unfortunate turning point, all influenced by the growing glut of preschool programming that's more merchandising based than substance based. And the show's been on 45 years. Most shows have signs of decay as early as the third season.

 

[fuzzygobo]

To some degree we're all a little biased for the era we grew up watching. For me it was the Unpaved years. For others, it might be the Around The Corner era. Some may swear by the current format. I've come to grips the show is not the same (and can't be) like it originally was, and now I'm starting to finally appreciate bits from the later years. Still not the hugest Elmo fan, but I no longer view him as the scapegoat for the "decline" is the last 15 years.

 

[JLG]

Drtooth: I agree with most of what you said. You have a history of pinpointing these things more directly than the rest of us, I've come to notice.

They've always been guided by research, but now they're starting to take on the same burdens, ironically, that public schools have dumped in their laps by too many parents and pretty much every politician in the country.

The new heavy-handedness----reflected in everything from the writing to the way longtime cast members like Sonia Manzano have changed their styles of delivery---is probably an inevitable result of those new curriculum guidelines, the tone of the preschool competition, and the same age-downward demographic shift that led to Elmo's World being created.

You also mentioned the problems with funding. One question that's bugged me for a while is that I've never understood how or why their funding depleted so much so fast in the late '90s. They went from their usual yearly 130 hours in 1997 to 26 hours in just four years. And that directly coincided both with a sudden increase in private sponsorship (McDonalds', Discovery Zone---remember how Ralph Nader raised concerns about that at the time?-----Cheerios, etc.) and the return of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to the donor list. What exactly happened? I know that Congress slashed PBS funding significantly in the mid 90s, so I suppose there was a delayed effect of several years and even the combined funds from both CPB and private companies wasn't enough to make up the difference? I also wonder why Ford and Carnegie dropped out of the game after the 1994-95 season (incidentally, almost exactly the same time as the cuts), since they'd been there from day one.

It's true that the Muppet skits still are often funny. And the newer cast members are fun. Chris in particular fits in so well that it almost feels to me like he was always there all along.
And yeah, the Spider-Monster skit was GREAT. (I'm so glad it was Oz doing Grover there. He just elevates everything. He always has.)

I do stand by my opinion, though, that generally the show is less unique and more generic than it once was. It's mostly, I feel, all the competition you mentioned----in general the tone of much preschool media is generic and vanilla by design. I assume it's because young children are thought to process/digest things best that way. And it may be true. It probably is true. But it's still regrettable. Because I feel that if the Sesame Street had always been the way it is now, it would still have accomplished its goals but it wouldn't have become nearly the cultural force it became, and people like us wouldn't have grown up to retain our interest in it. I know I wouldn't have.