‘Sesame Street,’ a representative children’s television program in the United States that was facing production suspension due to the expiration of its contract with the existing channel, has signed a new contract with the streaming company Netflix.
On the 19th (local time), according to the U.S. daily The New York Times (NYT) and The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the nonprofit organization ‘Sesame Workshop’ that produces ‘Sesame Street’ announced that it has signed a new distribution agreement with Netflix.
With this contract, more than 300 million subscribers worldwide on Netflix will be able to watch new episodes of ‘Sesame Street’ along with 90 hours of transfer episodes. Sesame Workshop noted that it would be able to escape financial difficulties and continue producing new content for the program.
Since 2015, Sesame Workshop has been producing new content through a contract with Warner Bros. Discovery’s broadcasting channel HBO, but it faced difficulties when Warner Bros. announced last December that it would not renew the contract.
Moreover, this year, the significant cuts to subsidies for public and nonprofit organizations by the Donald Trump administration further exacerbated Sesame Workshop's financial difficulties. As a result, in recent months, it had to reduce approximately 20% of its entire workforce.
‘Sesame Street,’ one of the longest-running programs in American television history, has aired over 4,500 episodes since its first broadcast in 1969. Sesame Workshop has produced the program with the goal of educating children to grow up healthily through entertaining stories.