Does Sesame Street still air classic segments?

[Drtooth]

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.

Funny story before I get to that point. There's this horrible cooking show on PBS Create that looks like a cheap, public access show. I swear this is true. It has so many sponsors ... I forgot, but it's at least 10. And it still looks like something shot in someone's basement. Really. 10 sponsors gets you that quality.

But yeah. As good as the intentions Nader thought they were, the outrage shouldn't have been McDonalds being a sponsor, but rather that they needed money from McDonalds. And to their credit, at least they tried hard as they could to obscure any commercial references to McDonalds in the sponsor announcements. Spaghetti-O's used the time to make a commercial for how it has as much calcium as a glass of milk... and no one so much as farted. I've seen blatant commercials in sponsorship messages of other shows. Arthur used to start with an advertisement for instant cinnamon buns and Clifford had one for Lipton instant soups (which are essentially 3 different kinds of salt). And to say they were disguised is like saying holding a thin square of toilet paper over your face is "hiding." And again, no one so much as coughed. But McDonalds and Sesame Street? That's like Hitler eating babies to parental groups.

On the other hand, since when did these sponsors get that greedy that they desperately need to air 20 second commercials, rather than short sponsor announcements like they did in the early 90's? The aforementioned cooking show? The sponsors are announced by name with a logo flashed. 10 of them. And it still takes less time than a Sesame Street sponsor funding credit opening. I'm sure these corporations get a nice tax write off, and I'm sure the sponsor money goes to PBS to get the money to buy the show rather than directly to Sesame Workshop... but the REAL problem, government pulling funding aside, is that they refuse to do any kid's pledge drives. D'Snowth said they stopped doing it in his state because of that Postcards from Buster episode. What's my station's excuse? Funding months are frequent, they feature the same lame infomercials disguised as self help programs and music specials aimed at senior citizens as a none too subtle hint of where they can dump their estate on someone besides their ungrateful kids. And it all goes to British TV shows. Yeah, we all love Sherlock and Downton Abby (they are good, actually), but it seems that most of the money goes to outbidding BBC America on British cop shows.

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.

I'll give you this... it did have some struggle periods where it had to absorb the same idiotic, hereto be discredited techniques of the competition. Journey to Ernie especially borrowed from Dora and Blue's Clues. Then again, in the classic era, while a LOT of what they were doing was certainly unique, they did manage to hold onto the long lectures that shows like Ding Dong School and Romper Room started. To be fair, that was the only gauge of what educational TV was like at the time. But they dropped it several seasons in. That was a learning curve.

The sad thing is, the writers do indeed agree with the older fans and they've been trying their darndest to get the show back to the original style. But every time they do, it tests poorly, and they have to go back on it. Meanwhile, the block format actually brought older kids (ones that can understand what they're watching at least) and was a boon to the ratings.

 

[D'Snowth]

but the REAL problem, government pulling funding aside, is that they refuse to do any kid's pledge drives. D'Snowth said they stopped doing it in his state because of that Postcards from Buster episode.

Well, to be more specific, kinda-sorta... mine is one of those holier-than-thou, uber-conservative, Republican states, so when word got out that there was going to be an episode of POSTCARDS FROM BUSTER that featured a girl with "two moms", all of the sudden, these fanatical religious and parental groups just in my area alone went ballistic, and started protesting people funding PBS altogether because it was promoting homosexuality to kids... and they assumed since one PBS Kids show is doing that they all were doing it, so they were basically like, "Don't show PBS any financial support, because Sesame Street, Arthur, and Clifford are now brainwashing out children into believing it's okay to be gay, and okay to accept gay people!" and yes, our funding during pledge drives dropped drastically because of it, hence why they stopped doing pledge drives and pretty much stuck with private funding and support. And again, as I said, mine is a die-hard Republican state, where if you so much as even let on that you're not a Republican, then you're pretty much looked down on as scum of the earth. Just to give you an idea, during my high school years, one year my mom, for whatever reason, signed me up for an after school political club (why she did that, I have no clue, I hate politics), and even though this club claimed to be "non-partisan", not once did they ever come out in support of local Democratic senators or governors or such, they always rallied behind the Republican candidates.

 

[Drtooth]

Well, to be more specific, kinda-sorta... mine is one of those holier-than-thou, uber-conservative, Republican states, so when word got out that there was going to be an episode of POSTCARDS FROM BUSTER that featured a girl with "two moms", all of the sudden, these fanatical religious and parental groups just in my area alone went ballistic, and started protesting people funding PBS altogether because it was promoting homosexuality to kids... and they assumed since one PBS Kids show is doing that they all were doing it, so they were basically like, "Don't show PBS any financial support, because Sesame Street, Arthur, and Clifford are now brainwashing out children into believing it's okay to be gay, and okay to accept gay people!" and yes, our funding during pledge drives dropped drastically because of it, hence why they stopped doing pledge drives and pretty much stuck with private funding and support.

I could get on the whole "Republicans want to defund PBS because they don't blindly worship their point of view/that's less money to give to the oil industry," bit.

But my state's different (but more conservative than people tend to think, but mostly in suburban areas), so I wonder what its excuse for dropping kid's funding is. They even, a year before they stopped, had a deal with local stores that you could actually pledge as little as a dollar directly. Why they stopped that I don't know. Maybe there was some flaw or something in the execution...

But the fact of the matter is this. Seems like any funding PBS gets goes directly to the adult programming, mostly for British programs... and there's no effort to have engaging or watchable programming in pledge month. No prime time Sesame Street specials, no TV show retrospectives (which they have... just NEVER on pledge month), no Wallace and Grommit shorts... just over all Get Help Quick schemes and Old Fogey friendly music festivals.

Though, to be fair, there's also Sesame Workshop's end. They get money from their products. Just... no one's really buying much of them lately. I blame Elmo Live. It came out at a rotten time, and no one was going to buy a 60 dollar thing for their kid. Any Tickle Me Elmo like Windfall was shot down. To their credit, they do have a huge global presence with other co-productions and other shows, so that can't be easy either. But I'm sure quite a bit of that money goes to celebrities and recurring show segments. And there's no way those are going to be toned down in the slightest.

 

[fuzzygobo]

Way back when, Captain Kangaroo (whom several of his key people jumped ship to join the fledgling Sesame) used to blast companies for shoving toys, cereal, and candy down young viewers' throats. Yet he had no problems using airtime on his own show to plug his line of toys, books and records. "Be the first kid on your block to have your own Mr. Moose hand puppet!" Nice self-serving move on his part.

 

[Drtooth]

I honestly wish Sesame Street got more heavily into the adult collector's market. Shame that both times an action figure line was proposed, the companies filed for bankruptcy. But you know what would be great? Sesame Street Funko Pops.

But back to the topic at hand... we don't seem to realize how gosh darn lucky we really are when it comes to classic clips. Sure, there are a LOT of sketches that will remain lost, though we could very well be surprised and have things like Crack Master and 7 Little Monsters some how appear.

But let us NEVER forget the tape trade times. Or when we had to buy 12 dollar VHS with a whole half hour's worth of footage (shorter than an actual Sesame episode, of course) to see one skit. Sure, it does kinda suck we can't see the old skits on the show anymore, but it's not like there isn't Youtube and SW's official Sesame Street site (which is a LOT more effort for a kid's show to reach out to the older fans than they really need to) doesn't have most of them.

 

[Drtooth]

Which is something I can completely agree to.

They do air some non-HD stuff when they're desperate for filler. I don't see why they don't air more full frame stuff from the past 10 years lately (again, unless they're desperate enough)... even non-HD stuff from the past 5 years. I still can't fathom, for a company that's strapped for cash refuses to air the other half of the Ernie and Bert claymation segments (or even release them on DVD or online).

On the other hand... They did, for a fact, air full frame segment. Unfortunately, it was Pre-School Musical. It's a funny skit, but it's about as culturally fresh as a sandwich in a vending machine in the basement of a long condemned building. If any Sesame Street has to retire any segment made for the show, it's parodies that are culturally irrelevant like that. I'm glad they only showed Joe Hundred Guy once.

But as I said before, Between the Lions made use of older segments when it hit wideframe/HD by shoving CGI curtains on the sides. Sesame can learn from that and make the most of 10 year old footage for when they need to reuse skits, instead of putting the same parody segments twice in a season.

But I'll say the one bright spot in not using footage that far back? They have to be creative with the double digit number segments. No more waterskiing pigs or kids painting a mural (so glad they finally put that old mutt down). They're getting great animations with clever concepts (eh, for the most part) instead of limping around with the same dull counting (or even worse... symbol recognition) segments they've been using since the 90's.

 

[D'Snowth]

See, this is one of the reasons why it's stupid to suddenly force everything on TV to be in widescreen, when you've got different footage shot in different formats cobbled together in the same work, you've got the problem of either having to show the widescreen footage in letterbox, or show the 4:3 footage in pillarbox, and then in some cases, you have to be creative in looking for ways to fill in the black bars (and I've said it before, but I hate how SEINFELD keeps getting cropped and recropped and squished and resquished on TV, I always have to readjust my TV's display to watch).

And again, HD is a myth. Cropping something in widescreen doesn't magically make the overall quality look better. If people with half a brainstem would take the time and look at something that was shot on 35mm film (that was properly preserved or restored or whatever) and compare it to things shot in so-called "HD" today, you'd see a major difference.

 

[minor muppetz]

But let us NEVER forget the tape trade times. Or when we had to buy 12 dollar VHS with a whole half hour's worth of footage (shorter than an actual Sesame episode, of course) to see one skit.

Really, 12 dollars? I recall the VHS tapes costing 10 dollars (okay, $9.99... maybe it was 12 when adding tax, but I don't remember paying 12 dollars for a Sesame Street VHS).

But in the VHS/pre-internet era, it was harder to know what was on a video without either actually watching it or being told by somebody else. Sometimes the descriptions on the back would mention some segments, and in 1990 they added a song listing to the back of the box (which they seem to have dropped for the most part when Genius got the video rights... as a matter of fact, the 25th anniversary special didn't have a full song listing on the back until it was released on DVD). I don't recall seeing promos for the videos on TV (I have seen a 1986 TV promo on YouTube, but it doesn't actually show any clips that appear on the videos, just the My Sesame Street Home Video logo sequence and the video covers). They didn't start putting promos for other videos in the videos themselves until Sony Wonder started releasing them.

And even after I got the internet, there was a period of time when I was really wanting to know what was on the older video releases (particularly ones that were long out-of-print or hard-to-find, like I'm Glad I'm Me and Getting Ready for School). It was rare for me to find a full listing online of all sketches on a video release (Muppet Central's review of The Best of Kermit on Sesame Street lists every full segment included, as a rare example). There was a thread on the Sesame Street forum at Internet Movie Database that listed full contents of various (but not every) video, and The Sesame Street Lyrics Archives had a list of videos and contents, though many were incomplete (and usually just listed the songs, sometimes not even having a complete song listing).

When I joined the forums, I was asking about what was on certain videos I had not seen (especially if they were no longer in print and hard to find... The ones I really wanted to know the contents of I eventually found used copies of since), some of which I wouldn't know until maybe a year later. Then Muppet Wiki started, and I think the full contents of all the older videos are now listed (I provided listings for many of the videos I knew the contents of). Of course, even in recent years it's sometimes hard to know everything that's on a single new releases. There are releases that have taken a bit of time before the full contents were posted on Muppet Wiki. If I buy a new release, and I don't always (usually if it has a clip I'm interested in owning, or if I suspect it'll have a good number of classic clips, or if I'm just really hopeful about a good amount of classic clips), then I'll post a list of contents as soon as I'm done watching (assuming nobody beats me to it).

I kinda wonder how common it is for rare clips to appear on the child-market releases, past and present. I guess you can say any current video release that has classic clips has rare ones since they're not broadcast anymore, but the classic clips that do get chosen for the child-market releases aren't really that rare (they could be found online). In fact, I don't think any of the clips on The Best of Sesame Street Spoofs were really rare (the unaired Jon and Kate parody is the obvious exception). But back in the pre-DVD era, did they put long-unseen clips on VHS? The stuff from the 1980s have a lot of material that I've hardly seen listed in episode pages (especially episodes after those videos were released), and sometimes the only copies I can find clips of online are obviously taken from those video releases. I think The Best of Kermit on Sesame Street has some that hadn't been seen in years. The review at Muppet Central mentions that the weather salesman segment hadn't been seen in years, and that reviewer hadn't seen Tadpole or This Frog before (and there's not too many known episodes that have This Frog included, I think Muppet Wiki only lists three episodes with that one).

Thinking about it again, I wanted Sing-Along because the description mentioned it had Rubber Duckie, which I hadn't seen in full in years, and I wasn't sure what other clips were included (well the description did mention "Sing" but I wasn't interested in that). And I wanted Monster Hits because it had Fuzzy and Blue and C is for Cookie (so that's two clips, both ones I had recently seen incomplete clips of but had only remembered seeing the full clips very rarely). In fact, I had also really wanted Learning About Letters because the description mentioned C is for Cookie, but it would be years before I finally saw that video. I had wanted Count It Higher: Great Music Videos from Sesame Street for years, in part because I knew it had The Ten Commandments of Health, but also because I really liked the original packaging. But I didn't get that until years later, when I saw that it was rereleased by Sony Wonder. I didn't think the packaging was as good as the original, and at the time I wasn't really as interested in Sesame Street video releases as I had been or would later be again, but when I looked at the song listings and saw that it had Do De Rubber Duck (a song I hadn't seen in years and had really wanted to see again since 1994) I just had to buy it (and was happy with the whole release).

 

[Drtooth]

There was an episode this very season. Pretty recent. But really, that skit is culturally irrelevant now. Disney no longer forces that stuff down everyone's throats.

And it ran in an episode where they also reran the "Looking for Big" segment. The second SATC movie kinda made that reference really irrelevant. Talk about a franchise killer. Didn't see what the fuss about it being terrible was. it just felt like a too long episode of the show.

 

[BuddyBoy600alt]

Well, The only place for Classic Sesame Street is PBS Kids Sprout.