So, hop in the Wayback Machine with me for a trip to 1969, the year Sesame Street debuted

Sesame Street was the first program to have an explicit educational curriculum plan, and to use research to make sure what they were showing supported that plan

The reason the show existed was to help kids from low-income households be more prepared for school

They knew they had to get higher-income viewers to have the support to reach those kids, but Sesame Street wasn't for them.

It was for the kids who lived on urban streets like Sesame Street - we suburbanite middle-class and up kids who grew up on it were welcome, and needed, but not what it was about

So when the announcement came that it was moving to HBO I was extremely concerned!

Because nothing says 'quality educational programing for low-income children' like a premium paywall, right?

So, while none of the three men who have been part of Sesame Street longer than almost anyone likely to read this has been alive have said anything about the reasons?

I'm not inclined to be charitable right now.

If you couldn't reach some sort of 'we're retiring because we've been doing this for more than 40 years' arrangement with them? That says something to me

And what it says is 'you done fucked up'

Bob McGrath has been part of Sesame Street from Day 1. The man is 84, for Pete's sake.

But you didn't announce he was retiring. You didn't have him move off the Street to be closer to family or something. YOU FIRED HIM.

capitalism

This is the sort of thing that's gonna t urn me into a radical leftist, I swear

Sesame Street was shown to have as much of a positive impact as fucking Head Start in terms of improving kids' educational outcomes

But we can't find the money for that? We, as a society, care so little about our children's future that one of the most effective educational initiatives of our time ends up selling its soul?

The sad thing is that I'm pretty sure it's been going this direction for years and nobody's been really able to say no

Between the whole bit of "Cookies are a Sometimes Food" (which, IIRC, was defeating the point of Cookie Monster being an anti-role-model of sorts) and the increasingly toyetic treatment of Elmo...

I'm not going to lie. This shit right here? Fucking disgusting.

Everything is a perversion of what the program was meant to be, I feel. They took away the parental bonuses, they've increasingly tried to merchandise it, and now this