HBO is known for skewing to a mature demographic, with explicit shows like Game of Thrones and Sex and the City.
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Yes, if you want new episodes immediately.
For the past 45 years, Sesame Street has aired on public television provider PBS as an American institution of quality kids programming, available to anyone with eyes, an imagination and a TV, rich or poor.
For that reason, this is a seminal moment – a mainstay of television is moving from the free airwaves to a paid model of media.
But “Sesame Street” fans accustomed to watching it on PBS won’t feel any disappointment. It’s expected to help Sesame Workshop adapt to emerging technologies that have upended the television business in recent years. Licensing deals including foreign rights, DVDs and toy sales make up most of the group’s revenue, with only about 10 percent coming from PBS.
“The losses just kept getting bigger and bigger”, Sesame Workshop CEO Jeffrey Dunn said in an interview with CNNMoney. Hundreds of people took to social networking sites to express their discontentment and said the partnership would amount to economic class divide by projecting PBS as favouring privileged children and discarding the economically backward ones, whom the show was originally aimed at.
While dwindling government and foundation funding led to commercial-free Sesame Street’s decision in 1998 to accept corporate sponsorship, it still struggled, yet survived.
Enter HBO, whose new streaming service HBO Now has separated the pay cable network from having to own a cable package or a TV.
Sesame Street’s next five seasons will now be available on all of HBO’s various platforms, which includes HBO, HBO GO, and the standalone HBO Now. Kids who watch the show are a lot less likely to fall behind in school. With this deal, Sesame Workshop now has the budget to produce twice as much content compared to previous seasons.
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For those disillusioned by news, there is a silver lining: HBO has only signed on for the next five seasons of Sesame Street. It will also create Muppets series along with other new educational programs for the children. The show will air on HBO in the fall, as well as its digital streaming outlets.
