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Its proposal, one of eight selected as semifinalists, targets children who face violence, limited access to education, loss of loved ones and other challenges.
“I have been in touch with each of them to meet in person,” Sesame Workshop CEO Jeffrey Dunn said.
The nonprofit workshop is partnering with the investment firm Collaborative Fund.
“It seems to me there is something depressing about all this,” lamented PBS’s ombudsman.
Reactions to the deal that are worth your time.
Some of our favorite responses to the big announcements.
New Sesame Street episodes will premiere exclusively on HBO starting this fall and will be available to PBS after nine months.
What we’ve been reading this week.
Two doctors who focus on the relationship between incarceration and public health have teamed up with a Sesame Street Muppet to call attention to the issue. Prompted by Sesame Workshop’s “Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration” initiative, the video released in October features two experts on prison health, the creator of the Sesame Workshop initiative and Alex, a Muppet with electric blue hair and an incarcerated father. The video followed the publication of “Sesame Street Goes to Jail: Physicians Should Follow,” an article in the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine. Drs. Dora Dumont, Scott Allen and Jody Rich called for physicians to pay more attention to mass incarceration and took note of Sesame Street’s involvement.
Plus: Sesame Workshop’s SVOD strategy, and a new website from Fred Rogers Co.
Sesame Workshop has hired Jeffrey D. Dunn, former CEO of the HiT Entertainment Network, as its new CEO.
Unruly street performers have prompted the children’s TV producer to consider legal action and a city councilman to propose a new law.
Plus: A controversial film spurs letters to PBS’s ombud, and Cookie Monster stars in a new app.
Plus: an interview with the creator of Vicious, and a boost for Reading Rainbow from Seth MacFarlane.
Plus: CBC braces for huge losses, and the Fred Rogers Center honors Yo-Yo Ma.
• Filmmaker Bernardo Ruiz (The Graduates/Los Graduados, Reportero) has received the Time Warner Fellowship from the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program to work on his latest doc, Recolectores (The Gatherers). As a fellow, Ruiz will get services from the institute including mentoring, grant assistance and attendance at its famous film festival. Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing) also got a production/post-production grant in this round of Sundance awards, which went to 35 filmmakers out of 750 applications from 93 countries. • Sesame Workshop is participating in this week’s annual Reinvent The Toilet Fair: India, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation event that showcases the latest in modern hygiene for developing nations. Making her debut at the fair is new Muppet Raya, who always wears her sandals to the latrine and washes her hands with soap.
And the produce market gets a deal on Sesame Street’s brand.
• Less than a week after the maker of the wildly popular mobile game Flappy Bird announced he would pull the plug on his creation, Sesame Workshop has introduced the browser game Flappy Bert. The gameplay, where players control a bird as it navigates Sesame Street’s Bert among obstacles, draws heavily on the original. It’s one of several Flappy Bird clones on the market but the only one starring Bert in an 8-bit sheen. • Today marks the premiere of a series of web video specials co-produced by PBS NewsHour and Al-Monitor, a news site featuring reporting and analysis by journalists and experts from the Middle East. The first, posting at 7 p.m. Eastern time, focuses on Syria.
Sesame Workshop voiced concern Wednesday after a North Korean government-owned trade publication highlighting a toy company’s apparent offerings came to light that appear to include unlicensed Sesame Street characters. The photos appeared in the latest issue of Foreign Trade of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a quarterly publication highlighting manufacturers of products ranging from plush toys and “Gold Liquor” to “cornhusk shoes.” On page 13 of the publication is a profile of Kyonghung Trading Corp., a 7-year-old manufacturer of plush toys, some bearing the likenesses of Cookie Monster, Big Bird and Elmo. In an email to Voice of America, which ran the story, Sesame Workshop said “we believe the toys pictured are unauthorized.” But, on his Twitter feed Thursday, Felix Abt, author of A Capitalist in North Korea: My Seven Years in the Hermit Kingdom cautioned that the picture did not equal proof the North Korean company was producing illegal knock-offs of Sesame Street characters. “Where is the evidence?
Following this week’s media scandal over allegations that were aggressively rebutted and later recanted, award-winning Sesame Street puppeteer Kevin Clash remains on a leave from his role as Elmo, one of the show’s most beloved characters. An accusation that Clash had an inappropriate relationship with an underage boy, published online early Nov. 12 by gossip news site TMZ, prompted Clash to request leave so that he could defend his reputation. Sesame Workshop, which looked into the allegations after learning of them in June, granted the leave and issued a statement:
“We . .