Sesame Workshop (SW), originally known as the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), is an American nonprofit educational television production and media company that has been responsible for the production of several educational children's programs—including its first and best-known, Sesame Street—that have been televised internationally. Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett developed the idea to form an organization to produce the Sesame Street television series. They spent two years, from 1966 to 1968, researching, developing, and raising money for the new series. Cooney was named as the Workshop's first executive director, which was termed "one of the most important television developments of the decade."
Sesame Street premiered on National Educational Television (NET) as a series run in the United States on November 10, 1969, and moved to NET's successor, the Public Broadcasting Service, in late 1970. The Workshop was formally incorporated in 1970. Gerald S. Lesser and Edward L. Palmer were hired to perform research for the series; they were responsible for developing a system of planning, production, and evaluation, and the interaction between television producers and educators, later termed the "CTW model". The CTW applied this system to its other television series, including The Electric Company and 3-2-1 Contact. The early 1980s were a challenging period for the Workshop; difficulty finding audiences for their other productions and a series of bad investments harmed the organization until licensing agreements stabilized its revenues by 1985.
Following the success of Sesame Street, the CTW developed other activities, including unsuccessful ventures into adult programs, the publications of books and music, and international co-productions. In 1999 the CTW partnered with MTV Networks to create an educational channel called Noggin. They sold their stake in the channel to Viacom (owner of MTV Networks) in 2002. The Workshop produced a variety of original series for Noggin, including The Upside Down Show, Sponk! and Out There. In June 2000, the CTW changed its name to Sesame Workshop to better represent its activities beyond television.
By 2005, income from the organization's international co-productions of the series was $96 million. By 2008, the Sesame Street Muppets accounted for $15–17 million per year in licensing and merchandising fees. Sherrie Westin is the president of the company, starting in 2021.
History
Background During the late 1960s, 97% of all American households owned a television set, and preschool children watched an average of 27 hours of television per week. Early childhood educational research at the time had shown that when children were prepared to succeed in school, they earned better grades and learned more effectively. Children from low-income families, however, had fewer resources than children from higher-income families to prepare them for school. Research had shown that children from low-income, minority backgrounds tested "substantially lower"Palmer & Fisch in Fisch & Truglio, p. 5 than middle-class children in school-related skills, and that they continued to have educational deficits throughout school. The topic of developmental psychology had grown during this period, and scientists were beginning to understand that changes of early childhood education could increase children's cognitive growth.
In the winter of 1966, Joan Ganz Cooney hosted what she called "a little dinner party" at her apartment near Gramercy Park. Attending were her husband Tim Cooney, her boss Lewis Freedman, and Lloyd and Mary Morrisett, whom the Cooneys knew socially.Davis, p. 12 Cooney was a producer of documentary films at New York public television station WNDT (now WNET), and won an Emmy for a documentary about poverty in America.O'Dell, p. 68 Lloyd Morrisett was a vice-president at Carnegie Corporation, and was responsible for funding educational research, but had been frustrated in his efforts because they were unable to reach the large numbers of children in need of early education and intervention.Davis, p. 15 Cooney was committed to using television to change society, and Morrisett was interested in using television to "reach greater numbers of needy kids".Davis, p. 61 The conversation during the party, which according to writer Michael Davis was the start of a five-decade long professional relationship between Cooney and Morrisett, turned to the possibilities of using television to educate young children.Davis, p. 16 A week later, Cooney and Freedman met with Morrisett at the office of Carnegie Corporation to discuss doing a feasibility study for creating an educational television program for preschoolers.Morrow, p. 47 Cooney was chosen to perform the study.
In the summer of 1967, Cooney took a leave of absence from WNDT, and funded by Carnegie Corporation, traveled the U.S. and Canada interviewing experts in child development, education, and television. She reported her findings in a fifty-five-page document entitled The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education.Davis, pp. 66–67 The report described what the new series, which became Sesame Street, would be like and proposed the creation of a company that managed its production, which eventually became known as the Children's Television Workshop (CTW).
Founding For the next two years, Cooney and Morrisett researched and developed the new show, acquiring $8 million funding for Sesame Street, and establishing the CTW.Morrow, p. 71 Due to her professional experience, Cooney always assumed the show's natural network would be PBS. Morrisett was amenable to broadcast it by commercial stations, but all three major networks rejected the idea. Davis, considering Sesame Streets licensing income years later, termed their decision "a billion-dollar blunder".Davis, p. 114 Morrisett was responsible for fund acquisition, and was so successful at it that writer Lee D. Mitgang later said that it "defied conventional media wisdom". Cooney was responsible for the show's creative development, and for hiring the production and research staff for the CTW.Davis, p. 105 The Carnegie Corporation provided their initial $1 million grant, and Morrisett, using his contacts, procured additional multimillion-dollar grants from the U.S. federal government, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Ford Foundation.Davis, p. 8 Morrisett's friend Harold Howe, who was the commissioner for the U.S. Department of Education, promised $4 million, half of the new organization's budget. The Carnegie Corporation donated an additional $1 million.Mitgang, pp. 16–17 Mitgang stated:Had Morrisett been any less effective in lining up financial support, Cooney's report likely would have become just another long-forgotten foundation idea.Mitgang, p. 17 Funds gained from a combination of government agencies and private foundations protected them from the economic problems experienced by commercial networks, but caused difficulty for procuring future funding.Lesser, p. 17
Cooney's proposal included using in-house formative research that would inform and improve production, and independent summative evaluations to test the show's effect on its young viewers' learning. In 1967, Morrisett recruited Harvard University professor Gerald S. Lesser, whom he had met while they were both psychology students at Yale,Palmer & Fisch in Fisch & Truglio, p. 8 to help develop and lead the Workshop's research department. In 1972, the Markle Foundation donated $72,000 to Harvard to form the Center for Research in Children's Television, which served as a research agency for the CTW. Harvard produced about 20 major research studies about Sesame Street and its effect on young children.Mitgang, p. 45 Lesser also served as the first chairman of the Workshop's advisory board, a position he held until his retirement in 1997. According to Lesser, the CTW's advisory board was unusual because instead of rubber-stamping the Workshop's decisions like most boards for other children's television shows, it contributed significantly to the series' design and implementation.Lesser, pp. 42–43 Lesser reported in Children and Television: Lessons from Sesame Street, his 1974 book about the beginnings of Sesame Street and the Children's Television Workshop, that about 8–10% of the Workshop's initial budget was spent on research.Lesser, p. 132
CTW's summative research was done by the Workshop's first research director, Edward L. Palmer, whom they met at the curriculum seminars Lesser conducted in Boston in the summer of 1967. In the summer of 1968, Palmer began to create educational goals, define the Workshop's research activities, and hire his research team.Lesser, p. 39 Lesser and Palmer were the only scientists in the U.S. studying the interaction of children and television at the time.Davis, p. 144 They were responsible for developing a system of planning, production, and evaluation, and the interaction between television producers and educators, later called the "CTW model".Morrow, p. 68Cooney, Joan Ganz (1974). "Foreword", in Lesser, p. xvi Cooney observed of the CTW model:From the beginning, we—the planners of the project—designed the show as an experimental research project with educational advisers, researchers, and television producers collaborating as equal partners. She described the collaboration as an "arranged marriage".
The CTW devoted 8% of its initial budget to outreach and publicity.Lesser, p. 169 In what television historian Robert W. Morrow called "an extensive campaign"Morrow, p. 112 that Lesser stated "would demand at least as much ingenuity as production and research", the Workshop promoted the show with educators, the broadcast industry, and the show's target audience, which consisted of inner-city children and their families. They hired Evelyn Payne Davis from the Urban League, whom Michael Davis called "remarkable, unsinkable, and indispensable",Davis, p. 154 as the Workshop's first Vice President of Community Relations and manager of the Workshop's Community Educational Services (CES) division. Bob Hatch was hired to publicize their new series, both before its premiere and to take advantage of the media attention concerning Sesame Street during its first year of production.Lesser, p. 40
According to Davis, despite her involvement with the project's initial research and development, Cooney's installment as CTW's executive director was questionable due to her lack of executive experience, untested financial management skills, and lack of experience with children's television and education. Davis also speculated that sexism was involved, stating, "Doubters also questioned whether a woman could gain the full confidence of a quorum of men from the federal government and two elite philanthropies, institutions whose wealth exceeded the gross national product of entire countries".Davis, p. 124 At first, Cooney did not fight for the position. However she had the help of her husband and Morrisett, and the project's investors soon realized they could not begin without her. She was eventually named to the post in February 1968. As one of the first female executives in American television, her appointment was termed "one of the most important television developments of the decade".Davis, pp. 125–126 The formation of the Children Television Workshop was announced at a press conference at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City on 20 May 1968.Davis, p. 127