Salon has a great article on the gentrificiation of Sesame Street, witnessed by its move from PBS to HBO.
excerpt:
And that’s the way all children’s TV seems to be going. Ganz Cooney created “Sesame Street” to end inequality; Jim Henson frankly stated his goal in putting "Fraggle Rock" on HBO way back in 1983 was to “save the world.” When Fred Rogers testified in defense of “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” he testified to starting out with a budget of $6,000 per episode to make his show–a paltry sum even in 1969, as he says, enough to pay for less than two minutes of a typical cartoon–but he felt it was worth it to provide children with an “expression of care.”
Where’s that utopian idealism today? That iron-willed determination to find the money in order to make good TV for kids, rather than to make good TV for kids in order to make money?
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