Could the original setting of Sesame Street work for today’s modern day audiences ?

[DatH]

not that you're likely to bump into an 8-foot tall yellow bird

Well not 8 ft, but....

Emu War - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Jokes aside, this kind of makes me think of the status of current PBS Kids in general. Development for shows since the mid 2000s has gotten horrifically limited, and the push in introducing quirky characters and the education concept over....actual grounded writing has dramatically increased. It honestly seems like education mandates...horrifically shifted, and writers noticeably are overlapping more in other shows (Brian Muehl and Joey Mazzarino wrote several eps in S11 of Cyberchase for instance, and longtime Arthur writer Peter Hirsch). The amount of eps being produced also drastically shrank across shows (Arthur's last season will only have about 3-4 eps). I honestly can't tell if it's a massive loss of budget, or if PBS Kids got way too comfortable rerunning, or both

So Seeing Sesame Street suffer similarly in growing more quirky and ungrounded is...not unexpected, even though SS's production is rapidly different to other PBS Kids shows

 

[D'Snowth]

That's just the way this industry works; writers who work in a specific area of entertainment have a tendancy to keep working in that same area. You brought up ARTHUR, well, Joe Fallon and Ken Scarborough were two of the most prominent writers of that show's earlier seasons, and they both have been writing for SS in recent seasons . . . and as for ARTHUR, I know one of the more recent writers for that show was David Steven Cohen, who was previous the head writer of COURAGE THE COWARDLY DOG, and even so, the team of Cliff Ruby & Elana Lessers have also been involved in recent seasons, whereas, once upon a time, they were writers for the 80s Chipmunks cartoon (of which they were also associate producers as well). Even just all of Nickelodeon's shows employee the same staff of writers. Once you establish yourself within a certain era or genre, you're pretty much planted there; you'll notice this in just about every genre you see.