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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Check this out. One, two, three, four! Sesame Street recently had a first. I've been practicing and practicing with my harmony. The show added its first guitar-shredding Asian-American Muppet to its cast in the wake of recent attacks against Asian Americans.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What's wrong? Um, when I was coming back here, a kid yelled out at me to go back home. It really, really, really hurt my feelings. Of course it did. And together with her friends, Ji Young tackled race in the most Sesame Street way possible. Let's go! La la la la la We can show that we belong La la la la la When we sing the song La la la la la
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But not everyone loved the new edition, when conservatives like CPAC chairman Matt Schlatt found out. They won't stop with their push for woke politics. They responded in one of the most conservative ways possible. Some conservatives are calling on the federal government to stop funding PBS over woke content on the program for kids. Including Sesame Street.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it turns out Sesame Street's been doing this kind of thing since before Fox News or CPAC even existed. To explain, we reached out to David Camp. I am the author of the book Sunny Days, the Children's Television Revolution that Changed America.
--:-- David Camp: I was part of Generation Zero of Sesame Street viewers. I was a little toddler on November 10th, 1969, when the very first episode of Sesame Street went on the air. Come and play, everything's A-OK.
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--:-- David Camp: The founders of Sesame Street, Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morissette, went into TV for a really weird reason, not for the fame and money, but to do good. You know, they wanted to create a TV show that would specifically alleviate the effects of poverty and kind of the educational imbalance between more affluent, mostly white kids in the suburbs and inner city black kids.
--:-- David Camp: So from the get-go, Sesame Street, its primary audience at the time, was resource-deprived Black kids living in big cities, 1969, 1970. Historically, Sesame Street has been designed as a show where people who are not part of the white hegemony can feel seen. The original target audience was Black kids.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- David Camp: If you were a Black kid watching at home, and it was very rare to see Black characters on television, it was really validating to feel seen when you had human characters like Loretta Long as Susan, and those characters were very validating to Black viewers at home.
--:-- David Camp: I'd like to think that I am a positive image for a Black female. They've done research and they've done interviews and people said, whether they were parents or kids, that made a difference to me.
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--:-- David Camp: When did Sesame Street first attempt something like this? You know, introduce a Muppet to represent a specific group of people and not like a cookie monster. The very first season of Sesame Street, which was the 1969-70 season.
--:-- David Camp: Matt Robinson, who played Gordon on the show. It's just good old storekeeping Gordon. He was also a writer and producer on the show, raised the point that there should be a Muppet who is palpably Black in mannerism and affect and speech patterns.
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--:-- David Camp: He made the point that when a kid's around Sesame Street watching age, which at the time meant age four or five, that's precisely when a kid recognizes that he or she is Black. And what does that mean? What does that mean about my place in the world?
--:-- David Camp: And so Matt Robinson said, we should have a Muppet character who is recognizably black to kid viewers at home. Jim Henson, who was in charge of the Muppets, made the point at first that, well, you know, the Muppets are not of color. You know, except the color that they are in terms of the materials they're made out of, like Kermit being green, Grover being blue.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- David Camp: When I think it might be nicer being red or yellow or gold or something much more colorful like that. But Matt Robinson made a good point. He said, well, yeah, but all of you Muppet performers are white people and mostly white guys. So the default cultural references for the Muppet characters are basically white men.
--:-- David Camp: And so Jim Henson said, hey, you have a point. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pig feet, but my name is not Peter Piper. It's Roosevelt Franklin, and I live on Sesame Street. This is a rarity, Roosevelt Franklin, in that he was a character who was developed not by Jim Henson and Frank Oz and Jerry Nelson and those guys, but by Matt Robinson.
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--:-- David Camp: Yes, I heard somebody wrong. Somebody call me by both my names, my first name first, and then my second name second. Roosevelt Franklin spoke in a kind of jivey street pattern that was very early 70s. He did not look African-American in appearance. He was a little purple guy with a shock of black hair, but his speech affect was very black
--:-- David Camp: Now where is that Roosevelt Franklin Somebody call me by my first and last name Yes, I called you, and it's about time you got here too. Now will you please come on? And his mother was played by Loretta Long, the other black human performer on Sesame Street, and her speech affect was black.
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--:-- David Camp: Well, we'll see if you know them for sure. I'm not so sure you even know you know. I know, I know, I know, I know. Roosevelt Franklin, how old are you? I used to be one, now I'm gone on two
--:-- David Camp: So they really went there in terms of creating these Muppet characters who, for black kids, would have this valuable takeaway that for the first time in my life, I see a character on TV who looks like me or speaks like me or speaks like a member of my family or my neighbors.
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--:-- David Camp: What you gonna do when you reach five? Gonna get some honey from the old behind. All right, Roosevelt. Yes, I like them. The very first Sesame Street album was not Ernie and Bert. It was Roosevelt Franklin. It's actually a great soul record.
--:-- David Camp: All right with me, come on. Roosevelt Franklin, you get the A. I'm gonna eat all the collard greens off of my face. But what you're gonna do when you get nine? I'm gonna take a ride on the railroad line. Choo-choo!
--:-- David Camp: Questlove, who I interviewed and wrote the foreword to my book, Sunny Days, said, When I was a little kid watching Sesame Street in Philly and I saw Roosevelt Franklin, it was like the sun coming out. It was so huge and validating.
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--:-- David Camp: My name is Roosevelt Franklin. Yeah, oh, he's Roosevelt Franklin. That's all right. You see, it's Roosevelt Franklin. He's out of sight. And Roosevelt Franklin knows his name.
--:-- David Camp: Was Roosevelt also controversial when he was introduced back in the 70s? Roosevelt Franklin was controversial out of the box and in a way that you wouldn't necessarily expect.
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--:-- David Camp: It wasn't because there was maybe a reactionary element watching and saying, we don't like this black Muppet, this black character. It was more the bourgeois black people who worked at the Children's Television Workshop, which produced Sesame Street.
--:-- David Camp: Children's Television Workshop had some black executives and staff members who objected to Roosevelt and felt blindsided by Matt Robinson's creation of Roosevelt Franklin because they thought that he was too street, that he didn't represent an aspirational ideal of what black American experience is.
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--:-- David Camp: Interesting. And so Joan Ganz Cooney, a white woman, had to listen to both sides of this argument. And she ended up siding with the bourgeois contingent who said Roosevelt does not send the right message.
--:-- David Camp: So Roosevelt was on for a good run. He was on for a good five years of the show. But he was phased out because of those objections.
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--:-- David Camp: So they get rid of Roosevelt Franklin eventually. Do they introduce any other characters with like really distinctive race? No, there's a really long dry spell where they really avoid the very proposition of it.
--:-- David Camp: It really wasn't until 2010 that they even started to go there. Don't need a trip to the beauty shop, cause I love what I got on top. It's curly and it's brown and it's right up there.
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--:-- David Camp: They had a song sung by what they call anything Muppet, which is just a generic Muppet, but who is a black girl with curly hair and brown skin. She sang a song called I Love my hair. And it's an anthem about loving your curly kinky hair if you're black.
--:-- David Camp: And this song really caught on. And that was already 11 years ago. But you know, that was the beginning of something. But it really wasn't until the murder of George Floyd and this reckoning we went through in 2020, the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, that the Sesame Workshop doubled down and really got serious about reintroducing characters that explicitly were Black or other races.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- David Camp: And so in 2020, we learned that we were introduced to new Muppet characters, child Muppets named Gabrielle and her cousin Tamir, who are explicitly African-American Muppet characters.
--:-- David Camp: How do you know what to do when you hear someone say you're not good enough? Go away. When someone is not let in because of the cover of their skin.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- David Camp: In the aftermath of all the really ugly anti-AAPI violence we've experienced in the last year and a half during the pandemic, the current Sesame Workshop recognized that there's a need to sort of, again, reinforce this idea that people are seen, people are understood, and it's win-win.
--:-- David Camp: So it's not just Asian American kids watching at home and saying, we felt seen. It's also non-Asian American Americans learning about a culture and not otherizing it, but welcoming it. Right.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- David Camp: And not everyone loves it. I mean, generally, the buy-in has been pretty good. Oh. You know, I haven't seen too much backlash.
--:-- David Camp: So there is an inherent buy-in when Sesame Street tries something that there wouldn't be if it was, you know, any other cultural institution. But there's always going to be people, you know, and, you know, for example, like on Twitter, the head of CPAC, who's a man named Matt Schlapp, you know, made a whole to-do about, you know, defund Sesame Street just because of the introduction of G-Young, the Asian American Muppet character.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- David Camp: Again, why introduce race? Why violate the sanctity and innocence of the bubble of childhood? And of course, there are extremely good reasons to introduce race. And it's nothing new. In fact, it's very old.
--:-- David Camp: Roosevelt Franklin dates almost all the way back to the show's earliest days. Is it fair to say the show's always been controversial? Well, the show has never actively courted controversy, but it has always been willing to not talk around race, but to go there.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- David Camp: And in the earliest days, you know, Sesame Street caught flack from the left and the right. You know, for example, like, you know, it was a public television show and, you know, not every state wanted to air Sesame Street.
--:-- David Camp: At the very beginning, the state of Mississippi, their public television board said there are too many black people on this show that will alienate our viewers. We don't want to air it. And this made the national news.
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--:-- David Camp: And effectively Mississippi public television was shamed into putting Sesame Street on the air pretty much from the get go But that was an example of maybe kind of reactionary white wing pushback Yet at the same time there was left wing pushback saying that Sesame Street was black enough Or even though it sort of had this urban setting where it was by design meant to look kind of dilapidated you know that it was too sanitized that it presented too much of a Pollyanna view of how different races mixed in this urban setting
--:-- David Camp: And you see to this day that politicians, particularly on the right, like to make hay of Sesame Street and use it as a wedge issue.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for today's show comes from Adio. What is Adio? Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They say it's extremely powerful, adapts to your unique data structures and scales with any business model. According to Adio, Adio takes less than a minute to set up, and within seconds you will have your email and calendars synced.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can join industry leaders such as Flatfile, Replicate, Modal, and so much more. You can go to attio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year. That's attio.com slash todayexplained.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
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--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hello there! Today's letter is... Ta-da! The letter T! For Today Explained. We're back and we're picking up with David Camp.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: David, tell me, how was Sesame Street funded when it first launched? Sesame Street is an anomaly in the history of television. It really was the only time the federal government went into the TV production business, meaning not just passively funding, but it was an active 50-50 partner in producing Sesame Street in its early seasons.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- David Camp: Half the funding came from government agencies. The other half came from philanthropic organizations like the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation. And by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How did that happen? How did the federal government decide to jump in and fund this children's educational entertainment show?
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- David Camp: Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morissette, when they founded this show, had great timing. I was lucky that my career was formed in an era eager to take on the unfinished business of America, especially the education of disadvantaged children.
--:-- David Camp: They had the idea for the show in 66. And though it didn't make it to air until 69, 66 was right in the middle of Lyndon Johnson's administration and his war on poverty, his great society.
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--:-- David Camp: I propose that we begin a program in education to ensure every American child the fullest development of his mind and skills. Huge amounts of federal money to improve public education, to alleviate the effects of child poverty.
--:-- David Camp: So they tapped into a good moment when they could get all manner of funding and goodwill to underwrite Sesame Street and make it a reality.
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--:-- David Camp: And how long does that glory last? In the early 70s, Richard Nixon becomes president. And he's actually also pretty supportive of Sesame Street. But he says, no, I'm a Republican. We're not going to keep funding this show.
--:-- David Camp: And so they recognized at Children's Television Workshop, the production entity behind the show, that we're going to have to pivot to other forms of funding.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- David Camp: And the show by then had become such a cultural juggernaut that they could make a lot of money from things like record albums and soft toys, you know, of Ernie and Bert and Grover and Cookie Monster.
--:-- David Camp: Who's giving everybody the giggles? It's Tickle Me Elmo. When your child tickles him, he talks, laughs, and his whole body shakes.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- David Camp: So there was this huge revenue stream that kind of kept them going for a long time without the government.
--:-- David Camp: How long does that last? I mean, honestly, that lasts well into the 80s and 90s because you've got ancillary rights coming from not just record album sales and toys, but suddenly, whoa, VCR. So you got VHS tapes and later on DVDs.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- David Camp: So there's this stream of funding that just keeps, keeps, keeps Sesame Street going until it doesn't. You know, things like DVD and VHS tape sales dry up because of streaming.
--:-- David Camp: You also have the atomization of the child viewing audience because, you know, going along with streaming is this idea that suddenly kids have a lot more choices than Sesame Street So suddenly Sesame know is fighting for audience share and it fighting for revenue and it needs a suitor to come in and save it financially
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- David Camp: And that suitor comes in the shape of... HBO, and now we'd call it HBO Max. But in 2015, they made a deal with HBO basically to sustain Sesame Street.
--:-- David Camp: And by the way, at a much smaller scale, they only do around 35 new episodes a year, which are half an hour long. In the old days, the old public government funded days, they did 130 hour long new episodes per season.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- David Camp: But nevertheless, HBO says, hey, we'll come in, we'll underwrite this show. H-B-O! Oh, he knows it! Now, the optics of this are problematic because if you think about Sesame Street's origins, it was originally conceived to be a show for the least fortunate and advantaged kids in America.
--:-- David Camp: Suddenly, a premium cable, and now we'd call it a premium streaming service, has the rights to Sesame Street. And first-run episodes are on HBO exclusively for nine months before they kick over to PBS where they're viewable for free.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- David Camp: Hmm. Does that change how accessible it is to all children across the country, across the world?
--:-- David Camp: In 2015, when the HBO deal was first announced, it felt like, you know, Sesame Street was getting more restrictive about who could watch its original programming, its first run shows.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- David Camp: But over time, in the six years since, I think that there's been a relaxation of that for two reasons. One, that Warner Media's funding as HBO's parent has allowed them to pursue a new slate of programming, an expansion of programming, you know, that allows them to do other shows under the Sesame Street banner beyond the flagship.
--:-- David Camp: The other thing is, is that Sesame Street is not just going out through HBO. It's going out through PBS and it's still getting public-private partnerships where, you know, they're getting it to people all over the world by whatever means necessary.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- David Camp: So like in refugee camps, they're doing it through apps and through WhatsApp, you know, any way possible.
--:-- David Camp: What does Sesame Street look like around the world? You know, we have a Syrian refugee crisis. And so they created a new version of Sesame Street for Syrian refugee kids called Alon Sim Sim.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- David Camp: So if you are a Syrian refugee kid living in a camp, you receive this version of Sesame Street that actually has Muppet characters who are experiencing what you're experiencing.
--:-- David Camp: There's a Venezuelan version because they also have a refugee crisis. You know, there's a South African version that caught a lot of right-wing flack some years back because they introduced an HIV-positive Muppet because they had an AIDS and HIV crisis in South Africa.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- David Camp: Yeah, we are having a street party here, Kanta Kalanisasemi, in support of everyone who is HIV-positive like me. You know, they're kids being born with HIV.
--:-- David Camp: And so they replicate this model all across the world for a variety of circumstances.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Just to be clear here, is there any government money currently going towards funding Sesame Street?
--:-- David Camp: Only a tiny fraction of money that underwrites Sesame Street comes from government agencies. It is overwhelmingly Warner Media's money and that of private benefactors.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hmm. But that hasn't stopped people from getting very mad when Big Bird goes and gets his vaccine.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All right. So today we cancel Sesame Street. Big Bird has a Twitter account now, by the way. He tweeted that he'd just gotten the vaccine despite having natural immunity due to the fact that puppets don't have respiratory systems.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Exactly. There's this kind of a hangover idea that Sesame Street is still a government funded show, but it's an easy way because it airs on public television for someone like Ted Cruz to say when Big Bird gets vaccinated, government propaganda for your five-year-old.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is it a public health thing? Yes. Are they aligning with people like Dr. Fauci? Has Dr. Fauci appeared on Sesame Street? Yes.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But Sesame Street is not government propaganda. But it's always going to be tempting to cynical politicians to make hay of this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Maybe, you know, maybe it works to get lots of retweets. But I wonder, you know, apart from being a useful, you know, political whipping post. Do kids still watch the show the way you did growing up, the way Questlove did growing up, the way I did growing up?
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do kids still have the same connection to Sesame Street when there are so many things to choose from on so many devices and so many platforms?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sesame Street will never command the huge viewing audiences it once did. That's just not going to happen again. But that's not going to happen for any TV show except a live sports broadcast.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so the question is, is Sesame Street still relevant? Sesame Street will always have a cultural cool and it has this reservoir of goodwill.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Who would turn down an invitation to Sesame Street? A lot of people feel like it's their aspirational apex. You know, like, yeah, I won the Oscar. I won the Grammy. I won the Tony.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But no, no, it was when Sesame Street called and asked me to be on the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's funny because the people, there's people who are obvious, like Billie Eilish and Lin-Manuel Miranda. It kind of makes sense.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But then you have Robert De Niro and Martina Navratilova coming on the show. You're like, what? But for them, it's a big deal, too, because their kids are watching.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they say, like, this is as huge as it gets. My kid's favorite show wants me on it. Oh, wonderful.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One, two, tip-tops on your shoe. One, two, apples. This one's for you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: David Camp's the author of Sunny Days, the children's television revolution that changed America. Halima Shah is the producer of this episode. I'm Sean Rameswaram for him. It's Today Explained. You want to be number two. Ah, ah, ah.
