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The Great Sesame Street Debate

muppet maniac

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Okay, so I couldn't think of anything else to talk about, so I thought we have this to discuss/think about:

Sesame Street: A show us Muppet/Henson fans know and love, alongside TMS, Fraggle Rock and so on...but we've heard many times that it was a production of CTW, and that Jim and his team was hired by them to create/perform the characters, plus they also, as it has been known, manage the copyrights to those characters...yet almost every die-hard Muppet fan believes it to have been a JHC(and CTW) show.

Let's recap...

"The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland" movie website(now defunct):
said the same thing about it not being one in the behind the scenes page.

From the "Television" section at the Henson Company's official website:

From the frogs, bears and pigs of The Muppet Show, to the multi-colored, furry Fraggles of Fraggle Rock; from the warm, nurturing comedy of Sesame Street, to the sophisticated, subtle drama of Jim Henson's The Storyteller, to the hilarious wizardry of Dinosaurs, the work of The Jim Henson Company demonstrates an astonishing range of styles and audience appeal

...and then there's the last blurb on that same page that reads: "In addition to its own television projects, the company continues to create and perform the Muppet characters featured on Sesame Street, which is produced by the Children's Television Workshop. The multiple Emmy Award-winning program is in its 29th season on PBS".

But despite what the last paragraph said(which was also mentioned in the company profile page and in their "Corporate Profile" from the 90s, which claimed that there were 67 episodes of The Muppet Show, which is totally inaccurate), Sesame Street has had its own page in the "Television" series category(every show that they made).

Let's take, for example: A company that manufactures...computer products. If they have made(or had) a product, then they'd put it up on their own website. If they've put up something that doesn't belong to them, then that would be stealing. Also notice in the Creature Shop category that they've divided the projects they were involved in the puppetmaking for in these categories: TV, Film and Others. The TV and Film were for their work in inhouse projects(or: "Henson Television Series/Specials" and "Henson Films" as they labeled them). The "Others" mean the projects not from their company, but they helped in them. If, like I said earlier, they were to put any of those films(ie: Babe, Flintstones, Ninja Turtles) in their "Films" category(on their site)...then what they would be doing would be known as plagirism, which can lead to serious consequences.

Hence which is why they never put up pages for those projects in their list of TV and Film stuff they've made. Which brings us to this point: If you were to look in the "Television" page...say for example, you enter the "Specials" section, you will notice a complete and accurate list of every one they've made(except that some of the air/premiere dates may be wrong). And, if you were to look at the "Series" section, you'll see, as noted earlier Sesame Street there, right along TMS, Storyteller, Dinosaurs, and so on.

Remember when Jim was inducted into the TV Hall of Fame? and there was a ceremony for that? Notice that on the brickwall Kermit, Piggy and several other Muppets stand behind are painted with "logos"(like graffiti). You can clearly see The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, SESAME STREET and Muppet Babies next to the Henson Associates logo.

And from a 1982 interview with Jim, in which he discusses Fraggle Rock:

"When The Muppet Show ended, we all sat around and said, what kind of television show would we like to do. We felt the need these days are for some quality children's programming. There's not much done of a quality nature for kids. We were also looking - because of the way we've been going with The Muppet Show and Sesame Street - to go more internationally. We thought it would be fun to try to design a show that would work well internationally and so that' s what we're intending to do with Fraggle Rock, and we are indeed now selling it around the world"

Basically, the "we" he refers to is his company. He also uses "we did" for some of the other things theyve made(TV specials, commercials, and so on).

Your turn.
 

minor muppetz

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The official site didn't have a page for Little Muppet Monsters, though. One thing that I noticed is that the site had a page for Elmo in Grouchland (which Jim Henson Pictures produced) but not Follow That Bird (I don't know if Henson ever had any ownership of that movie). Sesame Street: 20 and still Counting was also the only SS special that had a page on that site (and that special had a Jim Henson Productions credit).

I wonder... did The Jim Henson Company initially share the rights to the characters with Sesame Workshop before 2000, or did The Jim Henson Company have full ownership of the Sesame Street Muppets before selling to SW? The credits in most productions and products said "Sesame Street, the Sesame Street sign, and trademarks are copyright Children's Teelvision Workshop. Jim Henson's Sesame Street Muppets are copyright The Jim Henson Company." The rights to the Muppets initially were only referred to as being owned by Henson, but in the Muppet Central interview with Jerry Juhl, it is said that the Children's Television Workshop had to approve of scripts that feature Sesame Street characters in Muppet Show-related productons. If Sesame Workshop didn't have any ownership of the characters, then they wouldn't have had to approve of scripts.

The credits for The Muppet Movie mentions Big Bird being owned by the Children's Television Workshop, the credits for The Great Muppet Caper mentions Oscar the Grouch being owned by the Children's Television Workshop, and the Children's Television Workshop got a "special thanks" credit in The Muppets Take Manhattan (it's been awhile since I last watched these movies, so I could be wrong witht he wording for the credits of TMM and GMC). However, other Muppet productions featuring appearances by SS characters don't have special copyright credits (I am surprised that The Muppet Show: Season One release didn't even add an additional credit for the Connie Stevens episode saying "Ernie and Bert are trademarks of Sesame Workshop").
 

D'Snowth

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I simply skimmed through the post, but yeah Mike is right; a bunch of "creative young pioneers" was recruited to be staff members on the show, and Jim Henson was one of them, so he brought some new Muppet characters for the show.
 

BEAR

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mikebennidict said:
It's a fact that SS is a production of the CTW now Sesame Workshop and Henson wasa hired by Joan Cooney help lanch the show.


http://members.tripod.com/~hooperfan/Allaboutsesamestreet.html

YEP!:wink: Jim was one of the collaborators as was Joe Raposo for music and Jon Stone for writing...but in my opinion Sesame Street as a television show and product does not belong to the Henson name, it belongs to CTW/SW and mainly Joan Ganz Cooney. SHE created the show and asked for Jim to create the Muppet characters.
 

muppet maniac

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I wonder... did The Jim Henson Company initially share the rights to the characters with Sesame Workshop before 2000, or did The Jim Henson Company have full ownership of the Sesame Street Muppets before selling to SW? The credits in most productions and products said "Sesame Street, the Sesame Street sign, and trademarks are copyright Children's Teelvision Workshop. Jim Henson's Sesame Street Muppets are copyright The Jim Henson Company." The rights to the Muppets initially were only referred to as being owned by Henson, but in the Muppet Central interview with Jerry Juhl, it is said that the Children's Television Workshop had to approve of scripts that feature Sesame Street characters in Muppet Show-related productons. If Sesame Workshop didn't have any ownership of the characters, then they wouldn't have had to approve of scripts.

The credits for The Muppet Movie mentions Big Bird being owned by the Children's Television Workshop, the credits for The Great Muppet Caper mentions Oscar the Grouch being owned by the Children's Television Workshop, and the Children's Television Workshop got a "special thanks" credit in The Muppets Take Manhattan (it's been awhile since I last watched these movies, so I could be wrong witht he wording for the credits of TMM and GMC). However, other Muppet productions featuring appearances by SS characters don't have special copyright credits (I am surprised that The Muppet Show: Season One release didn't even add an additional credit for the Connie Stevens episode saying "Ernie and Bert are trademarks of Sesame Workshop").
Well, basically, CTW manages and produces the show. The people at Henson create, design, make and have Muppeteers to perform the characters. Henson and CTW each owned 50% of the characters. Of course, Henson owned the copyrights to them, whereas CTW owns the entire show.
When new merchandise and things are being developed, they're both involved in those stages. That all changed when EM.TV sold the rights to them to Sesame Workshop(which CTW is called now) in 2000, lettting SW have complete control of its own characters of their show. Henson still provides the characters, props and the Muppeteers to perform those characters, yet now they're in the hands of someone else.

Now you know the reason why the rights to the Sesame Street characters were not intended to go to Disney back in 1990(when Disney/Henson had a merger agreement). Because they were between his company and CTW.

But hey, when a production studio has a project they've made, they put a page for it on their own website. What's in the categories of websites NEVER lie.

Well, only the airdates/premiere dates can be wrong sometimes.
 

Ilikemuppets

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Doesnt The Jim Hension Company own some of the rights to some to the projects that the creture show made creatures for, too?
 

wiley207

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The Sesame Street books from the 70s up until the 90s had the disclaimer "Featuring Jim Henson's Sesame Street Muppets." If a book had only one Muppet, the disclaimer would read something like "Featuring Big Bird, a Jim Henson Sesame Street Muppet" (from "I'll Miss You, Mr. Hooper") or "Featuring Grover, a Jim Henson Muppet." (from "Would You Like To Play Hide and Seek with Grover?")
 
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