Sesame on the Street: HBO drops iconic children present forcing it to search out new house
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Warner Bros. Discovery has ended its agreement to air new episodes of Sesame Street on HBO and Max, leaving the beloved kids’ show searching for a new home.
The program, which has been running since 1969, first started airing on HBO in 2016, before being moved to HBO Max (now known as Max) in 2019.
Max’s decision to stop airing the new episodes comes as the platform increases its focus on content for adults and less for children.
“It has been a wonderful, creative experience working with everyone at Sesame Street on the iconic children’s series and we are thrilled to be able to keep some of the library series on Max in the U.S.,” a spokesperson for Max told The Hollywood Reporter. “As we’ve launched Max though and based on consumer usage and feedback, we’ve had to prioritize our focus on stories for adults and families, and so new episodes from Sesame Street, at this time, are not as core to our strategy.”
However, Max will continue working with the producer of the program, Sesame Workshop. Max will still stream old episodes from Sesame Street’s catalog until the end of 2027, and the show’s current and 55th season will be available on the platform in January.
“We are excited to extend our 10-year partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery, keeping Sesame Street’s iconic library available on Max through 2027,” a spokesperson for Sesame Workshop said. “We will continue to invest in our best-in-class programming and look forward to announcing our new distribution plans in the coming months, ensuring that Sesame Street reaches as many children as possible for generations to come.”
Now, the program is in search of a new platform to stream new episodes of Sesame Street, from the yet-to-be-released season 56 and beyond.
Max reportedly plans to say farewell to many beloved children’s shows from the late 90s and early 2000s. According to Movie of the Night, animated programs like Teen Titans, The Looney Tunes Show, Static Shock, and Green Lantern will no longer be available on the streaming platform in 2025.
In 2023, Sesame Workshop also first shared its plans to make some creative changes to the 56th season of the program, which will air next year.
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“With any change you have evolutions, and then you have things that are slightly bigger steps, while still staying core to who we are,” former CEO of Sesame Workshop, Steve Youngwood, told THR at the time. “We felt like this was a moment to step back and think bigger about how we evolve it.”
“It’s going to give us an opportunity to dive further into the narrative,” Kay Wilson Stallings, the Executive Vice President, Chief Creative Development and Production Officer for Sesame Workshop added, saying the changes were a way of “reimagining” the show.
