Sesame Street Questions

[familyplan]

Hello all. I imagine this will be considered a newbie post, but I do have to start somewhere.

I'm here online because I have a two year old daughter. She isn't all that interested in "modern" Sesame Street - she greatly prefers to watch Pocoyo during the occasional TV time she gets.

Then we got the Old School Volume 1 DVDs. My daughter loves them - as do we! We can all sit and watch them together, singing songs and learning. Needless to say our Old School Volume 2 DVDs are on order, but there are just NOT ENOUGH EPISODES! We desperately want more. So I have a bunch of questions.

1. Is there a Sesame Street FAQ anywhere on the Internet? I keep Googling, and I looked on this site, but I couldn't find one.
I'm now interested in finding out things like when "Elmo's World" took over the show, and when they stopped showing old segments mixed in with the classic ones.

2. Doesn't anyone have videos of entire old shows? I see hundreds of tiny clips on YouTube, but frankly, we just want to sit down with our daughter and experience the ebb and flow of a full show. I downloaded a whole bunch of awful Noggin rips from BitTorrent, but they're pretty ugly. I looked in the "Buy Sell Trade" forum here and NOBODY is discussing this. Needless to say I am not trying to stiff CTW of any money. I am gladly buying the DVDs. But there are too few shows on DVD! I presume when they were showing on Noggin SOMEONE was recording them, right?

3. I saw that Noggin used to show old Sesame Streets, but they apparently don't any more. Why not? Will they do so again?

If there's a FAQ someone could point me to, that would be great, and it would take up less of your time. I just can't find the FAQ!

I'm sorry once again for naive questions. I really just want to watch Sesame Street with my child.

 

[The Count]

Hello and welcome to Muppet Central.

To help you out:
1 At the top of the forum's main page, you'll find a link to Muppet Central's FAQ. If you don't find the answer to a particular question, you can ask us here. We might not be able to answer right away, but you'll get a wealth of help in the meantime. Also, you should visit muppet.wikia.com for all your Muppet resource researching needs.
2 If you're searching for older episodes, I suggest you contact Boober_Gorg or check the thread about Trading SS Episodes in the Sesame Street Merchandise or Classic Sesame Street sections of the forums.
3 No, sadly, Noggin probably won't ever air Sesame Street episodes. They phased all CTW/SW content out of their network when Nickelodeon bought out CTW/SW's 50% share of the network.

Hope this helps and have fun exploring the rest of the forums.

 

[familyplan]

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I checked out that Wiki - very helpul! But here are some questions that I couldn't find answered elsewhere.

1. Why are they producing so few episodes nowadays? Looking at the Wiki, they went from 100+ per year to 50, and now to 26 - the absolute minimum to cover the alphabet. Why so few?

2. I notice that Sesame Street went to their less entertaining "new format" in season 33. Was that also the point when they stopped rerunning old clips as parts of shows?

3. Thanks to your explanation, it's clear why Noggin will no longer show SS. But what about Sprout or Kids13 (a PBS digital channel here in New York?) Have there been any discussions of resurrecting "Sesame Street Unpaved" on those channels?

Thanks. I'm sure I'll have more questions, but I'm hoping my questions are at least entertaining to others.

 

[The Count]

Hi... Lemme see what I can answer.
1 You have to take into account that Sesame's budget was drastically reduced by PBS, added to now that they have to seek corporate sponsorship. It seems that twenty-six episodes is just enough for most other television series' seasons, and the actors/cast are happy with the change to a smaller season's worth episode load.

2 Not sure what you mean, as classic clips are still shown in today's episodes. If you take the time to either watch them or read through the episode reviews here or at Muppet Wiki, you'll find some animation and songs from the older seasons interspersed in the current run.

3 Not sure about the NY channel you mentioned... But it was a possibility when Sprout launched that they would have the almost 70 episodes of Sesame Street Unpaved as well. Don't know if this has come to fruition, but others who have and watch Sprout mention that episodes from Seasons 25-32 are often aired.
Hope this helps.

 

[CensoredAlso]

2 Not sure what you mean, as classic clips are still shown in today's episodes. If you take the time to either watch them or read through the episode reviews here or at Muppet Wiki, you'll find some animation and songs from the older seasons interspersed in the current run.

I don't know, I honestly feel there have been less and less classic clips shown, though they aren't completely gone. And there are many clips that haven't been shown in years. They don't seem like a priority. I guess it depends on your perspective. Like "is the glass is half empty or half full?" In my opinion, as far as classic clips go, it's half empty.

That's great that your child enjoyed the Old School DVDs! Hopefully the Sesame Workshop will see that there's still a demand (and not just for classic fans). Nowadays, it can be very difficult to be a fan of classic Sesame Street or Muppets, you really have to make an extra effort.

Have you looked for individual DVDs in the video and book stores? Several are from the more classic era. Sometimes you can check the years to make sure but there are other ways. If they don't have Elmo on the cover, it's probably classic. And on the back of the DVDs, they usually list the puppeteers. If Jim Henson and/or Richard Hunt are listed, it's usually classic.

Amazon also has a few rare Sesame Street VHSs, sold by third party sellers. I've gotten a few from that source. Hope this helps!

 

[mikebennidict]

Hi... Lemme see what I can answer.
1 You have to take into account that Sesame's budget was drastically reduced by PBS, added to now that they have to seek corporate sponsorship. It seems that twenty-six episodes is just enough for most other television series' seasons, and the actors/cast are happy with the change to a smaller season's worth episode load.

2 Not sure what you mean, as classic clips are still shown in today's episodes. If you take the time to either watch them or read through the episode reviews here or at Muppet Wiki, you'll find some animation and songs from the older seasons interspersed in the current run.

3 Not sure about the NY channel you mentioned... But it was a possibility when Sprout launched that they would have the almost 70 episodes of Sesame Street Unpaved as well. Don't know if this has come to fruition, but others who have and watch Sprout mention that episodes from Seasons 25-32 are often aired.
Hope this helps.

How do you know the actors are happy with the cutback of how many episodes are made a year?

I hear all the time form members and even noticed how some aren't on as much because of this.

 

[minor muppetz]

Sesame Street still repeats sketches from other episodes, but rarely anything from before the late 1980s. And usually anything from the 1980s that are shown feature Ernie.

Sprout is currently showing episodes of Play with me Sesame, which has newly-created footage along with classic segments. I haven't seen any epsidoes of the series (as I don't have Sprout, and never had Noggin), but I have seen both the recent DVD releases, which have plenty of 1980s clips (along with 1990s clips).

The Sesame Street Podcast occassionaly has classic clips included. The last few epsiodes have had at least one 1970s clip included.

Some videos that I would recommend: Learning About Letters, Learning About Numbers, Getting Ready to Read, I'm Glad I'm Me, Bedtime Stories and Songs (which was retitled Sleepytime Songs and Stories when it was rereleased in the 1990s), Big Bird's Storytime, Learning to Add and Subtract, Play-Along Games and Songs, The Alphabet Game, The Best of Ernie and Bert, Monster Hits, Count it Higher: Great Music Videos from Sesame Street, Sing Yourself Silly, Sing-Along, Bert and Ernie's Word Play, Rock & Roll, Dance-Along, Elmo's Sing-Along Guessing Game, A Celebration of Me, Grover! The Best of Kermit on Sesame Street, and Sing, Hoot, and Howl!

Many of those have been released on DVD, though quite a few are getting harder to find copies of, and a few haven't been released on DVD, and are out of print. You might want to search your local flea markets or goodwill stores, or even local libraries (most of my local libraries have quite a few Sesame Street videos) and video stores.

 

[The Count]

Well... There was a posting a while back made by someone who met and asked Caroll Spinney about the cutback of episodes per seson, and Mr. Spinney said that it was better because with the handful to produce each year it was less strenuous for the cast. Not sure, there might be others who have a differing viewpoint, just going by what I sorta remember from all the posts read here through the years.

 

[dwmckim]

I'm sure it would differ from person to person but i wouldn't be at all surprised that overall cast members enjoy the reduced number of episodes...they're probably paid way less, but think of what it must have been like in the early days!

They were cranking out hour long shows to be shown daily five days a week for 26 weeks (half a year) - granted, out of an hour episode you would also have animations, films, etc and lots of repeated material but still it must have been an insane production schedule...daytime soaps are one of the few modern comparisons and this is an around the clock operation - even though actors only tape certain hours, once that stops, the work on getting sets in place (or built) begins and of course factor in rehearsals, learning material (not just dialogue but songs...including choreography at times)...lots of quick fast based stuff in the early days as well so i can imagine it both being very exciting but also very draining.

While i think that while each of the more modern seasons have their strengths and weaknesses, you can see how the reduced episodes does benefit the show in terms of quality - that is production values...the writing will never match up to the early days thanks to all the political correctness and sometimes over the top mania that has developed in the last 30 years in terms of what one can and can't do with children's programming, but you do see that they can put more time and care into things like sets, production numbers, directing and the like.

...and while Sesame may not do as much episodes a season, they're still rather prolific in terms of output as the extra time is done making home videos, specials, and other misc content.