VIDEO: How Do You Feel About HBO Paying for Sesame Street?

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Jeff Somogyi
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DealNews Contributing Writer
Additional contributions by Louis Ramirez and Dan Leadbetter.

HBO has announced that they'll be paying for the production costs for the next five years of Sesame Street. In return, the premium channel gets a nine-month exclusivity window to new episodes; after that, PBS can show them for free, as usual.

In this brief video, our puppet-like experts discuss if this HBO/Sesame Street deal is bad news!


What about you, reader? Are the benefits worth it? Is this a disservice to public broadcasting and its viewers? Let us know in the comments below!

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Jeff Somogyi is constantly trying to come up with ways to surprise and delight audiences the world over. He takes humor seriously ... too seriously. (Honestly, we've never seen him laugh ... it's kinda creepy.)
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4 comments
Zifna
Nine-month delay on the new episodes, but then they're free? Kids don't care if they're watching re-runs.

Cool, good deal for everyone, it seems like... The only question I would have is how this affects things like PBS reselling the episodes or licensing them to Netflix/Amazon Prime etc.
August 20, 2015
swinn
Sesame Workshop takes in 47 million a year in merchandise licensing. Their operating expenses are 17 million a year to produce a season of 26 episodes. Big Bird pulls down $314k a year. Elmo makes... an undisclosed amount. Tell me why they need to be rescued again?
August 19, 2015
rampo
I just don't see a problem, which I would if HBO were to become the exclusive broadcast outlet of "Sesame Street. Public television "innocence" ended the first time craven politicians made it a political football. For crying out loud, every public television show goes through its list of corporate sponsors before and after each show, and in recent years they even run little mini-commercials. HBO has probably RESCUED "Sesame Street" from inevitable future budget cuts. And kids, who have no problem watching "Frozen" on a constant loop for days/weeks/months on end, will not have an issue with waiting a few months for new and MORE episodes of "Sesame Street."
August 19, 2015
Al-in-SoCal
I heard a story about this on NPR - there are several reasons why this is good among the best is that local PBS stations no longer need to pay for the show - it's completely "free of charge" for them allowing them to spend for other things. PBS gets all the content 9 months afterward and I doubt very much kids watching PBS will notice a 9 month differential - perhaps adults will - but we're not the shows target audience.

If HBO tightens the contract, however - then we can reconsider whether or not it's still a good deal. Now, however it seems to me it is.
August 19, 2015