‘Sesame Street’ is making some B (for big) changes

Sunny days aren’t going anywhere, but soon we’ll be singing a new tune: Can you tell me how to get, how to get to HBO?

Sesame Street is packing its’ bags (and Oscar’s trash can) and moving to HBO. Before you freak out and start flailing your arms around in the air, this is good! This is actually great news for everyone — man, woman, child, and Muppet. It does, however, mean that a few things are going to change, but they will be changing for the better.

So here’s the news: HBO and Sesame Workshop just reached a brand new deal. The gist of it is simple: HBO is going to be behind the production of Sesame Street episodes for the next five years. If you can recall back to your childhood (or just the last time you watched an episode of Sesame Street) it has always been brought to us from public funding and donations from “viewers like you.” While that’s always been enough money to make the show, it was never a whole lot of money. Money was also always brought in via things like DVD sales, which just aren’t really part of our culture anymore. According to the New York Times, over the past few years Sesame Street has actually cut down on its production budget.

But now HBO is going to be a H-E-R-O. With this new deal, Sesame Workshop will be able to make 35 episodes a season, instead of its usual 18. The episodes will air first on HBO (and all HBO platforms). Then after nine months, the episodes will start airing F-R-E-E of charge on PBS and all its platforms. Sesame Street will still return this fall to PBS Kids with, “a selection of episodes from the last several seasons edited in new ways.” These new episodes will be 30 minutes instead of an hour. 

Also, HBO is also going to make a Sesame Street spin-off, because everything gets a spin-off.

“[This partnership] provides Sesame Workshop with the critical funding it needs to be able to continue production of Sesame Street and secure its nonprofit mission of helping kids grow smarter, stronger and kinder,” Sesame Workshop CEO Jeffrey D. Dunn explained in a statement. “It allows Sesame Street to continue to air on PBS and reach all children, as it has for the past 45 years.”

This is all around awesome news, and everyone is coming out a winner in the end. Sesame Street gets the money to make double the amount of episodes it normally would! PBS doesn’t have to pay for the episodes after nine months! Kids still grow up with Elmo’s word of the day!

These brand new episodes of Sesame Street will start airing as early as THIS FALL. So tell all the kids you know; this is a big deal.

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[Image via Sesame Workshop]