Ugh.
That is disgusting. I don't know who's to blame for that, but it's a complete disservice to Sesame Street fans. As much as I'm usually a proponent of releasing old Sesame Street episodes on different platforms, if they can't get the rights to their own songs that were written for them because of some idiotic licensing deal, what's the point? They might as well just keep releasing just clips of episodes online instead of full ones. I know that it shouldn't be an issue and we should be grateful that they're releasing these, but...
There's things I can totally forgive about Sesame Street from the perspective of it being a show I've outgrown several times over, and kids wouldn't know or care about things they haven't seen until maybe they find out about them later. But this strange problem with securing the rights to songs written for them by someone who was instrumental in shaping the show back in the day is baffling. And yes, I totally understand that music rights are the most insane thing there is out there. This seems like something strangely beyond SW's control, even with WB or HBO's money. And this could be blamed on anything from a shifty estate (though you'd think that his estate would know how important he was to Sesame Street and vice versa) to greedy old farts that buy up rights to songs for the sake of owning them and making money having the rights have to pass through them. But for whatever reason, someone has to get their crap together and work something out for a show's use of a song written specifically for the show.