Inside Sesame Street’s toughest year yet

SHERRIE WESTIN: The creator of Sesame Street, she saw that children were learning like beer commercials, and she thought, well boy, if they can learn that from watching television, why can’t we market letters and numbers? This was a huge experiment. Now we’re in 190 countries and actually the largest informal educator in the world. Look, how do we make sure Sesame is around for the next generation? It is still under-leveraged. There’s so much more we can do. These Muppets are powerful role models.

BOB SAFIAN: That’s Sherrie Westin, CEO of Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit that owns and operates the iconic children’s TV show, Sesame Street. I wanted to talk to Sherrie as Sesame’s 56th season begins, because the challenges they’re facing are hard to count. As a media entity, Sesame’s grappling with new formats and changing viewer habits. As a nonprofit, it’s been hit by funding cuts from the U.S. government. As an education platform, it’s navigating the impact of AI, yet Sherrie is upbeat and warm and, of course, instructive. She talks about balancing risk-taking with brand trust, partnering with Netflix and with Google, and why emotional well-being and kindness are the skills that matter most in today’s world. So let’s get to it. I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

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I’m Bob Safian. I’m here with Sherrie Westin, president and CEO of Sesame Workshop. Sherrie, thanks for being here.

WESTIN: Well, thank you so much for having me. I’m thrilled.

Copy LinkInside Sesame Street’s partnerships with HBO and Netflix

SAFIAN: We’re recording this on Monday, November 10th, which marks not only Sesame Street’s season premiere, but the 56th anniversary of the show, which is super impressive in today’s media world, so congratulations.

WESTIN: Right? We’re calling it Sesame Street Day. So thank you for having me on Sesame Street Day.

SAFIAN: Your new season appears on Netflix on the same day as it goes live on PBS Kids. Now, last year at this time, you were on HBO or Max or whatever they were calling it at that point.

WESTIN: Right. At that time, yes.

SAFIAN: HBO dropped the show. Netflix came in. It’s a head spinning situation. Was this all by design on your end?

WESTIN: Well, listen, I mean it all worked out really well, and I will say that. And we announced it as a public-private partnership between Netflix and PBS because it was so important that we not only got the incredible reach that Netflix offers, but also that we were still available for all children across the U.S. on PBS. And it’s fantastic that it’s the same time, day and date, but that part was by design, for sure. And listen, we had a long partnership with HBO.

We still have a library deal, so that there are still some seasons on HBO Max, but HBO Max was clear that children’s was not their priority. So we don’t take it personally, and we still have a great relationship, but Netflix is such a great place for us to be. As of today, we are reaching children in 190 countries. That’s 330 million households in over 30 languages, and it’s the first time in 56 years that we’re reaching this many children all over the world. So that is something to celebrate.

SAFIAN: And so even though Netflix, as I understand this, maybe paying you a little less than that HBO deal –

WESTIN: Yes.

SAFIAN: It’s a good trade-off because your reach is so much broader?

WESTIN: Well, listen, most people don’t understand that we’re a nonprofit mission-driven organization, so while we desperately need the funding, at the same time, the most important thing is our reach because we have to reach to teach.

SAFIAN: Did you consider moving everything to Netflix? I mean, I imagine you might get a more lucrative deal from Netflix if it was exclusive and the financing being what it is.

WESTIN: No, listen, Netflix was great. They understood how important it was for us to be on PBS, to reach all children across the country, whether or not they can afford a streaming platform. So that’s just part of our mission and our DNA.

Copy LinkHow the funding cuts to PBS impact Sesame Street

SAFIAN: You mentioned your long relationship with PBS. It’s been a wild year, this wave of government funding cuts, Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS, you had to lay off 20% of your staff. How hard has it become this year?

WESTIN: I don’t ever remember a more difficult, more challenging year than this past year. There were some really difficult decisions and periods. No one ever wants to have to lay off 20% of their staff. That’s one of the hardest things. Any organization, whether it’s for-profit or nonprofit. And again, a lot of organizations have had to deal with downsizing, or right sizing if you will. But it has been a really challenging year.

SAFIAN: I’ve talked to someone about this, how, in some ways, public media has just become media because the support from the public sector isn’t quite there anymore. At the same time, there was that hearing back in the spring with PBS there with this title, like Congressional hearing, Anti-American Airwaves. I mean, I’m curious how you address that mood, that climate with your team when your partner is being, I don’t know, politicized in that way?

WESTIN: I will say, look, the hardest thing is there is such value in public broadcasting, and we find it so painful to have lost the CPB. I think the biggest tragedy is to see some children no longer have access to public broadcasting or the quality early education that PBS has always brought, of course, including Sesame Street.

Copy LinkWhy Sesame Street remains so relevant

SAFIAN: You don’t feel like any of this has hampered Sesame Street’s own brand by its relationship with these?

WESTIN: No, I think, if anything, that it’s clear that the need for Sesame is greater than ever. And it’s true that we are part and parcel public broadcasting. So if you’re attacking PBS, you’re attacking Sesame Street. It’s true. But at the same time, I think that if there’s one silver lining to some of the negative press we’ve had throughout the year, it’s that so many people have stepped up to say, “We love Sesame.” We’ve actually gotten a wonderful outpouring of support from new donors and from people who just want to see Sesame Street remain.

Think about what we teach. Our mission is to help children everywhere grow smarter, stronger, and kinder. And that may sound like a clever tagline, but it’s not. It’s a whole child curriculum that’s baked into everything we do. Smarter, ABCs and 123s, academic basics. Stronger, resilience, health. Kinder, empathy, understanding. And I can’t think of a time when teaching empathy, understanding our whole new season is about building community. It’s about kindness. If you use the vernacular of child development, it would be called a compassionate mindset. And that means helping children see themselves and others with kindness, with understanding, with non-judgment. So quite frankly, I think we are rising to meet the needs of the day.

SAFIAN: Compassion, kindness, those are themes that you talk about always, but particularly now.

WESTIN: I think one of the reasons that Sesame Street remains so relevant in spite of being around for all these years is because we’re always looking at what are the most pressing issues affecting children? Coming out of COVID, we saw that the mental health crisis was only exacerbated. So we really started creating content that was around emotional well-being, to help build a foundation for young children, to help enlighten caregivers and parents on the importance. And then out of that grew more focus on kindness, on empathy. And again, when we are looking at what seems like a more polarized world than I can remember and a really divided world, again, that’s part of what factors into the curriculum and the areas that we focus on.

SAFIAN: I mean, Sesame’s never been shy about addressing tough topics, from diversity in the early days, the first HIV positive puppet, to Big Bird getting vaccinated during COVID. But things have become so polarized now, especially in the U.S. What kind of conversations do you have about where you can and can’t go and how you decide?

WESTIN: Well, we are a nonpartisan organization, but you are correct that there are an awful lot of issues today that one would never have thought of as being political, that are political. And while we would never weigh in on very specific, partisan politics, we have to stay true to our values. And are some things more controversial? Yes. But if you look at what we all have in common, it’s so interesting because we just did a road tour through the summer and the fall to visit children and families all across the country. But during this road trip, in all these various states, we had a couple of researchers on the ground.

And after the events, with everything from state fairs to minor league baseball, farm corn mazes, we would have staff saying, “Hello, I’m with Sesame Street. I’m asking parents of young children, would you be willing to talk to us a little bit about your children, about Sesame Street, about who do you trust most? What do you want for your children?” And one of the things I just love about this is regardless of where we were, there was such a clear commonality. What do parents want for their children? They want them to be safe, healthy, and they want them to be kind and get along with others. I mean, that was so consistent. It came up again and again. To me, it’s hopeful and reassuring because when it does feel more divided than ever, you do realize that the one thing that unifies us is hope for our children and what we want for our children. And that’s where, I think, Sesame can play a powerful role.

SAFIAN: There has been this decline in trust across everything.

WESTIN: Absolutely.

SAFIAN: Media, public officials, business. Sesame remains still pretty well trusted.

WESTIN: We are still, if you do brand surveys, we are the number one trusted brand in children’s properties. And that’s something we really cherish. I mean that’s very important to us. Everything we do is based on research. We are always listening to parents and experts. We have a whole team of child development experts, but any project we do, we’re also bringing in advisors and learning from the community. We did an incredible amount of work around parental addiction because of the opioid crisis, working with partners on the ground to distribute those resources. Our emotional well-being work, again, we partner with organizations that are serving children and families, and often it’s the only content you’ll have that looks at those tough issues through the lens of a young child. And that’s something, again, that, I think, sets Sesame apart.

SAFIAN: As you’re talking about your brand and how trusted it is. I can see there’s a certain way where like, we don’t want to take too much risk here. Let’s do our research. Let’s not put that trust at risk. And yet at the same time, you have to take risk in certain situations to be able to address some of these new areas.

WESTIN: Well, I think that as long as our north star is what’s best for a three-year-old, yes, a lot of things are more controversial than they used to be. And I’ll be honest, I spend time thinking about how to remain a beacon without being a lightning rod. So you do want to make sure you’re not being overtly political or taking on something that I couldn’t justify, but this is the most important thing. When you mention vaccinations, we did that after COVID when it had been made clear that vaccinations were finally available for six and above. Just so happens that Big Bird is also six. So we decided to have Big Bird vaccinated, partnering with the American Academy of Pediatricians. And yes, vaccinations had become more controversial, but we still did it because we believed it was the right thing, it was important for children and it would help reassure children and parents. So that’s something I feel really confident was the right thing to do.

Copy LinkAdapting to evolving media consumption habits

SAFIAN: Children’s media has evolved so much from the slow pace of Mr. Rogers to the overstimulation of Cocoa Melon. Is the attention span of children changing? Does that change how you approach what you do?

WESTIN: Absolutely. If we’re going to compete, as I mentioned earlier, we have to reach to teach and we have to engage children. So if we were still just putting the same show on from 56 years ago, I dare say we wouldn’t be competitive. And it’s important for us to evolve as children evolve. And it’s not so much their attention span, it’s how are they consuming media? Where are they consuming media? What are they used to? And so we’re always doing research. We need to reach children where they are, if we’re going to be able to have the impact we want to have, both on academic learning but also on behaviors. These Muppets are powerful role models.

SAFIAN: I saw this quote from one of the original Sesame creators about how, at that point, they said, “We want to master the addictive qualities of TV and do something good with it.”

WESTIN: I don’t remember the addictive quote, but I will say, look, no, what I remember, Joan Ganz Cooney is about to turn 96 years old and she was the creator of Sesame Street. She saw that children were learning from beer commercials, and she thought, well boy, if they can learn that from watching television, why can’t we market letters and numbers? This was a huge experiment. At the time, television was the new medium. It wasn’t thought of as appropriate for young children. There was certainly nothing educational. And this was an experiment to see if television could be used to teach. There was so much research that showed that children in poverty were showing up at school without the skills they needed to learn. And so the impetus behind the Sesame Street experiment was, wow, if we could give access to quality early learning to all children, could we really help children arrive at school ready to learn? The rest is history. There’ve been over 1,000 studies on the efficacy of Sesame Street, and we did just that.

SAFIAN: I think sometimes that, in some ways, Sesame created the model that some social media actually lives on today. I mean, it was a lot of shorter snippets.

WESTIN: We had the wonderful interstitials, you still had the street stories, you had the characters. Joan often said she thought she was creating the quintessential American show. It was on a stoop in Harlem. It was the first multiracial cast. And within a year, Brazil, Germany, Mexico all wanted their own adaptations. And that’s what led to our co-productions, where we created local productions of Sesame with local Muppets, curriculum designed to meet the needs of those children in their language. Now we’re in 190 countries and Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind Sesame Street is actually the largest informal educator in the world.

SAFIAN: Even in tough times, Sesame continues to take on tough topics and to keep growing. As we tell our kids, it’s the tough moments that build character. So what lessons does Sherrie hope business leaders most embrace right now, and how is she managing Sesame Workshop’s AI transition? We’ll talk about that and more after the break. Stay with us.

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Before the break, we heard Sesame Workshop CEO, Sherrie Westin, talk about the challenges of government funding cuts and the opportunities of a new partnership with Netflix. Now she talks about how Sesame Street is utilizing new tech platforms, including AI, the toughest business had to make, and the role of empathy and emotional well-being for kids and for all of us. Let’s jump back in. 

Copy LinkHow Sesame Street pivoted in Lebanon during COVID

There’s lots of ways that media reaches kids and so you have to think about what you’re creating differently. Even though you’re thinking about the show, it may not be about the show?

WESTIN: Absolutely. People think of Sesame as television or as media. Obviously we’re everywhere children are. We have to be on multiple platforms, digital, WhatsApp, around the world, high-tech, low-tech. One of my favorite research studies is actually in Lebanon. We had done a huge partnership with the International Rescue Committee to bring early childhood interventions into Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, in response to the Syrian refugee crisis, because more children were displaced than any other time and had left behind their homes, their school, their opportunity to learn. We created an all-new Arabic Ahlan Simsim, which means Welcome Sesame, reaching 27 million children through satellite, YouTube, digital. Also created resources so those IRC workers on the ground could have Sesame local Arabic content to go into home visits and learning centers. So when COVID happened, all of that shut down, obviously. No one could be in-person.

So we took the Ahlan Simsim content, we put it on WhatsApp. We made sure that groups of parents, this particular study was in Lebanon, had access to the content on their phones. We then took the home visitors and the teachers from the learning centers that were no longer able to work, to be in-person, train them to be facilitators, and they would call the groups of parents twice a week and just go through how to use this content with your child. The NYU Global TIES did a research study, a randomized controlled trial that showed that those families, those children in Lebanon, in just 11 weeks had learning outcomes equivalent of a full year of pre-K. And so that’s the power of Sesame, the power of media and Muppets, I like to say. I am sure that those results were as high as they were because we were not only providing the tool, but providing the catalyst for more engagement between adult and child.

SAFIAN: And when a model like that succeeds that way, how do we keep doing that?

WESTIN: Well, that’s what we’re doing in Latin America. It ended up being the perfect way to reach migrant children on the move. So you’re absolutely right. We have learned so much about how to use various forms of media, various forms of technology to reach children all over the world. It’s quite powerful.

Copy LinkSesame Street’s approach to AI

SAFIAN: I’m curious how you think about AI. I mean, it’s certainly shaking up the educational world and the creative world. So it’s both sides of where you live. I mean, it’s got people nervous. It also has the promise of broader accessibility and personalization.

WESTIN: We think of AI as a really important space for us to be in. It can help tremendously in terms of personalized learning, particularly for children with disabilities. And in terms of dubbing and language barriers, in terms of storytelling, there are a lot of ways we’re using AI. We’re also using it to really curate our content, to be able for parents to access content around different issues easily. But with AI, it’s so important, when you see the opportunities, that you also understand that there are risks. And Sesame is really focused on digital well-being because children are gravitating to technology younger and younger. And so often with new technology, children are an afterthought. And so we are working with a lot of different AI companies and tech companies around how can you use AI in really responsible ways? How can we be thinking earlier about how do we support digital well-being?

For instance, Google.org has funded research and resources around helping parents and families have guides, strategies to build a healthy relationship with technology at a young age. Where can AI and technology be used as a catalyst for engagement between children and adults? And what can we avoid in terms of the negative impacts? It’s like television 56 years ago, the new technology of the day. And we have an independent innovation and research lab called the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, named after our founder, and they are doing incredible work and research on how to use AI in terms of creating in responsible ways and how to provide guidelines and really be an incentive for a lot of organizations to be putting children first.

SAFIAN: These partnerships with the tech firms, are you reaching out to them? Are they reaching out to you?

WESTIN: Both. It’s both, actually. I think most of these tech companies do know that they need help if they’re going to focus on children, and we want to be both an incentive and catalyst to be pushing them, but also be able to provide research and guidance, if we can.

Copy LinkWhat it’s like to lead Sesame Workshop

SAFIAN: For you, as a leader, I’m curious, you work somewhere that teaches emotional maturity. Are you more conscious that, as CEO, you need to lead in a certain way? Are you allowed to get angry and lose your patience?

WESTIN: Well, it’s funny because in meetings, we’re often saying, “Okay, wait a minute, are we being smarter, stronger, kinder?” We have to live our mission. I do say words that would not be on Sesame Street, on occasion.

SAFIAN: It happens. It happens. Although you’re not three years old, you are an adult talking to other adults.

WESTIN: Right. Yeah.

SAFIAN: I guess you’re allowed to do that. And when you’re kept up at night by the strains and the stresses of being a CEO, of running this business, is that largely around the funding topics that you referred to?

WESTIN: Well, a lot of it is around the funding. I mean, listen, when we lost the USAID funding, like everyone else, and that was really hard. Fortunately, government funding for Sesame Workshop is less than 4%. So that’s not existential to the organization overall. But in a place like Bangladesh, that’s 100%. We’ve been on the air for 20 years in Bangladesh, such dedicated employees. I’m so proud of that work. I’ve visited them many times. And we had to shut down Sesame Workshop Bangladesh. That’s the kind of thing you wake up at 2:00 A.M. thinking about. We had to eliminate our work in Iraq. So those are really hard.

SAFIAN: And when you go to the Googles of the world or the other foundations that you’ve relied on and you bring up these things that you have to shut down, it’s just not so easy to get that support.

WESTIN: Not in certain places. It’s harder. And when you are, this has been a year, as I said, where we had some larger issues in terms of overall funding, and that makes it harder. If everything else were fine, you’d figure out a way to go fund Bangladesh. But that’s not the case if you are struggling in a larger way and need to be looking at the mothership, if you will.

SAFIAN: You have to sacrifice some things to keep that mothership going.

WESTIN: I mean, that’s heartbreaking. But yes, that was the case.

SAFIAN: Yeah. I talked to a CEO recently who said that children’s stories encompass every important business lesson, like children’s books till you’re five have every important business lesson. Is there a Sesame Street lesson that particularly resonates with you, personally?

WESTIN: Well, listen, I think the fact that Sesame has always focused on, not just the academics, but the emotional well-being and the empathy. My daughter was three and a half when I came to Sesame Street, and when she turned about six, she said to me, “Mama, my friend Susanna doesn’t like where you work.” And I said, “Well, do you mean Susanna doesn’t like Sesame Street?” And she said, “Yes.” And I said, “Well, that’s okay. Susanna is eight. She’s your older friend and children outgrow Sesame.” And Lily said, “Doesn’t that hurt your feelings?” And I said, “No.” And she said, “Are you sure?” And I said, “Yes.” And she said, “Oh, good, because there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you.” And I thought it was so adorable. And I also thought, oh, she’s learned empathy. Okay, she was like a Sesame child, for sure. So I think those stories of empathy and understanding that Sesame models and that our characters model is really important.

Copy Link“There’s so much more we can do”

SAFIAN: If you were a private business, your investors would be saying, “Well, as your audience ages out, you should have something else for them. Pass them along to the next educational tool.” Do you guys talk about that?

WESTIN: Listen, there are many, many incredible shows that we made for older kids, but in this last year, as we are focused on, look, how do we make sure Sesame is around for the next generation? You start to focus on what only you have to do. Or not just have to do, but what’s our sweet spot? What do we do best of all? There are others who can step in, but if Sesame Workshop went away, there would be no Sesame Street. And so that’s been, as much as I would love to continue to do all of that work, and there’s been some incredible creative, but I believe that Sesame Street is still where we’ll make the biggest difference.

It is still underleveraged. There’s so much more we can do. And listen, Bob, I’m glad you raised it, because there is no more important time in the child’s life than the first five years of life. In terms of their brain development, we can have the greatest impact on their long term outcomes by reaching them in those early years. And it’s another place I think the creators of Sesame were so prescient to focus on those first five years. We now have the brain science. We have the economic data that shows the return on investment, not just in education, but long-term productivity and health. So I feel like preschool is where we can make the biggest difference reaching children in their early years, and that’s what Sesame Street does.

SAFIAN: Well, Sherrie, this was great. Thanks so much for doing it.

WESTIN: Well, you are so nice to have me. I really am grateful for the opportunity.

SAFIAN: Focusing on where we can make the biggest difference. It’s a key role of leadership to keep everyone on the same page and prioritize. Of course, we also need agility in how we meet those priorities and I love Sherrie’s story about innovating in Lebanon during COVID, how that’s informed Sesame’s efforts in Latin America and elsewhere. Hard-earned lessons are worth keeping with us. Most of all, in listening to Sherrie, I’m struck by Sesame’s increasing emphasis on emotional learning. The ABCs still matter, but learning how to interact with each other with kindness is at least as important. I’m going to pop over to Sesameworkshop.org now to share my support with Elmo and Grover and Cookie Monster and even Oscar The Grouch. These old friends, they still matter, and they should. I’m Bob Safian, thanks for listening.