The Future Of ‘Sesame Street’ Hangs In The Balance. Its Core Audience Might Not Care.

At this phase of the doomscrolling era, chronically online folks are accustomed to catching a glimpse of news that’s even marginally concerning and reacting to it with fervor. That’s particularly true when it comes to headlines about a piece of pop culture from their childhood that might be in jeopardy. This week, it was “Sesame Street.”

Nearly a decade after relocating from PBS to HBO ― a controversial move that meant some kids were no longer able to access the iconic children’s program, due to the shift from a free to a paid platform ― “Sesame Street” will once again be looking for a new home. Max, which has streamed the series since it moved off HBO in 2019, has decided not to renew its contract with the show beyond its 55th season, which premieres next month.

The platform will retain all “Sesame Street” episodes and programming through 2027 only.

In response, Dr. Cambria Nwosu posted on Threads: “As a mother and someone who grew up with Sesame Street, I’m deeply disappointed by this decision. Sesame Street isn’t just a show — it’s a lifeline for early education, teaching kids about kindness, diversity, and resilience.”

Comedian Paul F. Tomkins posted on Bluesky: “Imagine being the person who cancels Sesame Street and just living your life after that.” Meanwhile, another person posted on X: “I’m about to fall out into [the] abyss. They have canceled Sesame Street. Next will be the libraries. The poor children. Our future.”

If people really feel “Sesame Street” has such a crucial connection to children, this conversation might be 15 or 20 years too late. The series still indelibly enriches children from many backgrounds, and their families, with social, emotional and literacy skills, but Marilisa Jiménez García, associate professor of childhood studies at Rutgers University-Camden, told me that it lost a lot of appeal to its core audience years ago.

Part of that, the professor said, is because the show abandoned its mission statement. In 1969, “Sesame Street” was created largely as a way to help challenge the negative narrative about Black and brown people children in the wake of the civil rights movement, similar to the motivation behind Head Start years prior. “I was like, all these great minds are gonna get together and fix the problem of especially children of color lagging behind in schools because of what can be perceived as lower literacy rates,” Jiménez García said.

That was in part by showing human cast members of color exploring topics beyond literacy, like empathy and equity, alongside the Muppets that now make up so much of the show.

“I think that they lost touch with a certain kind of human aspect,” Jiménez García said. “It was all about your friendly neighbors on ‘Sesame Street.’ The puppets were cool, but the puppets were really like representations of children. They’re not necessarily the neighbors themselves.”

And the neighbors — like Loretta Long as Susan, who joined the show in its first season, and Sonia Manzano and Emilio Delgado, who were cast as Maria and Emilio in 1971 — were fundamental to helping teach young children what inclusion and compassion actually look like.

“It was really about looking at these amazing, friendly, different people that live around you and embracing that,” Jiménez García said. “And, like, everyone has something to bring to the table and we’re all in the same situation.”

It’s difficult to determine exactly when and why the human cast started to take a back seat to the Muppets, but all of the three aforementioned performers were off the show by 2016, the year “Sesame Street” moved from PBS to HBO.

By then, the show had long since become a juggernaut, serving as a simple yet significant example of impactful pop culture that extended beyond public television with its own curriculum and on to other free platforms like YouTube and social media. But, as Jiménez García emphasized, the show also morphed into “puppets, puppets, puppets, cartoons, cartoons, cartoons.”

That’s when its core mission got a little blurry, and it just so happened to be around the same time as the HBO move, which led to audiences lamenting about the show’s lack of accessibility and even claims that it had become gentrified. The show no longer had a focus on disenfranchised children; it was, by then, largely commercialized with merchandise like a Tickle Me Elmo collectible doll for around $70.

When I spoke with Jiménez García, she had just returned from a trip to Disney World; she’s the first to admit her hypocrisy when it comes to the issues of consumerism and the capitalist system. And she recognizes that with “Sesame Street,” those forces can help create a sense of community.

“Children’s television has always been commercial,” the professor said. “It’s a consumer citizenship. Some people would say it’s like teaching kids how to be citizens through how they are loyal to a certain kind of brand. They’re learning something, but they’re also buying into [it].”

Plus, it makes the brand money, and with money, the show can continue doing what it does best.

“It might just be these dolls, these spinoffs, these digital — they have digital games, so many coloring books, all the things that come with these shows,” Jiménez García said. “And, to be honest, the human characters never sold those things. It was always the puppets and the images that did that.”

Fair enough. But at a time when it seems like every day there’s a new article about how children are less and less interested in reading for pleasure, we can’t really avoid a conversation about whether young viewers might also just not be interested in a show that puts literacy forward. Jiménez García said that the issue is far more nuanced, especially for children of color.

For one thing, “Sesame Street” was never just about teaching children how to read and getting them excited to do it, in the way that “Reading Rainbow,” which also ran on PBS at the time, focused on.

“We’re going to teach you how to read,” Jiménez García said. “We’re going to teach you how to decode. We’re going to also teach you how to read your world and say that it’s OK for you to read your world, that reading is not just about reading a novel.”

Over the years, that mission grew less unique than it once was. Shows like “Super Why!” and “Gracie’s Corner” started reaching kids in a similar way ― including using platforms like YouTube ― and with more of an impact.

“I’ve taught classes with students where I’m like, Hey, you guys remember watching ‘Sesame Street?’” Jiménez García told me. “And they’re like, ‘No. We love ‘Super Why!’ or ‘Dora [the Explorer].’ All these different other figures — ‘Blue’s Clues,’ to a certain degree.”

“[They] kind of filled that gap of feeling like you have a friend across the television that is speaking to you with respect as a child,” Jiménez García said.

And that’s hard to duplicate through mostly Muppets, even though, as the professor acknowledged, the show has done an admirable job “reimagining themselves for different phases.” It’s introduced Muppets across various identities, including one who’s Filipino American and one who is deaf.

“Sesame Street” has also boasted a number of celebrity guest stars of color in recent years, including Ariana DeBose, Michael B. Jordan and Kal Penn. But that’s not the same thing as the audience expecting to see diverse people in every episode. The show becomes about something else.

“I think they also lost touch with that, if I may,” Jiménez García said. “I think that might also be why — it’s just like, what is this? Like, what are we doing anymore? Because that mission really became like this universal, every child thing when it was really for kids of color. Just being real.”

Point taken. Plus, in 2024, kids savvy in social media and digital tech ― particularly those who are marginalized due to race, religion or ability ― are coming up with their own versions of the O.G. “Sesame Street.” “There’s just a lot of other ways that children can perhaps access storytelling: through social media, through their YouTube channels, through fandoms, through writing their own stories, quite frankly,” Jiménez García said.

That has its value as well, she added, “because it empowers a certain audience to be able to create their own media and their own voices being heard.”

And, perhaps, to connect with each other in a way that “Sesame Street” hasn’t really done effectively in recent years. Part of that, Jiménez García suggested, is because a lot of people fail to realize how important even a relationship with the public library can be. When it comes to particularly disenfranchised children of color, or kids marginalized by their race, ability or religion, the show needs to think about how they’re learning and meeting the kids where they are.

“I think sometimes we don’t realize what kids are actually going through, especially the kids that we say we want to reach,” Jiménez García said.

A conversation with a librarian in Camden, New Jersey, got the professor thinking more about just that.

“They’re like, ‘A lot of the kids who come here live in shelters,’” she said. “‘Don’t get them books.’ A lot of them do have phones. So, what’s really great is that their library card gives them access to databases and they can read manga on their phone or watch programming via the library.”

For a long time, access was part of what made “Sesame Street” so groundbreaking and essential. Shifting from free to paid programming made that issue clear. An effort to expand the brand with the spinoff “The Not-Too-Late Show with Elmo” only underscored the problem when the new show was canceled after just two seasons.

The issue with commercializing can have a ripple effect.

“If you really want to reach children that are at the margins of our society, you need to have a public intervention,” Jiménez García said. “You need to make it accessible as much as possible. These other avenues don’t really make any sense.”

Well, they still appeal to the mainstream crowd that has largely contributed to the success of all the “Sesame Street” toys and other merchandise.

“You’re going to lose the core,” Jiménez García said. “And that core gives you an audience for generations that passes on. I think that this new audience is not as loyal. And I think that’s the other thing. It may be loyal to a brand, but it’s just not as loyal to what ‘Sesame Street’ can be.”

The professor’s last statement there is vital. The core mission of “Sesame Street,” as she described it, has always been racial justice. But what does that look like in 2025, as Donald Trump reenters the White House amid a wave of book bans, vendettas against critical race theory, and other accelerating right-wing agendas?

The show was founded in the spirit of resistance, and it’s weathered its share of conservative critics over the years, including outrage over its multi-part Black Lives Matter town hall in 2020. But its conspicuous efforts to also connect with mainstream audiences raise questions about how the show might evolve even more.

Jiménez García’s feelings around that are twofold. On one end, she understands that “Sesame Street” has always had both liberal and conservative audiences who extend across racial lines and who, in essence, want the same thing.

“I would say most people would agree [the show] is like the hope of the American dream,” she said. “I’m talking like Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream, which is this idea of, ‘We don’t judge each other by the color of our skin.’ I think that exists on ‘Sesame Street’ and it’s idealized.”

But the response to the town hall complicated that.

“That’s a different conversation than just ‘racial justice and unity and we’re all represented,’” the professor explained. “Because I think BLM is really a conversation about specific systemic issues that are hurting specific people.”

That, she added, was a bit atypical for “Sesame Street.”

“I think they never really got into some of that as much,” Jiménez García said. “Whereas, that town hall really got into that, and that’s when they got a lot of pushback that was systemic, specifically. You know what I mean?”

Sure. But conservatives weren’t the only ones critical of that town hall. While the event was overwhelmingly praised, some thought it wasn’t as outright as it should have been.

“I taught that town hall to my 2024 graduate students, and they just tore it apart,” Jiménez García said. “They were like, ‘It is just not going far enough. It’s not doing this, not doing that.’ And I’m like, ‘But it’s ‘Sesame Street.’ They’re doing their ‘Sesame Street’ best.’ You know what I mean?”

Yes, it was political and it was basic. But even that obviously rattled some audiences, while leaving others dissatisfied.

“Right,” Jiménez García agreed. “The basic-ness. But this is what makes a difference. ‘Super Why,’ ‘Blue’s Clues’ is never going to call a town hall. It’s always going to be ‘Sesame Street,’ because they’re uniquely situated as this kind of public project. That’s who they are.”

But that’s also what has led to its share of criticism, she added. “Even though they’ve watered it down through the years, that’s what we expect from ‘Sesame Street.’ We expect them to respond when there’s a national trauma, when there is a real issue that we need to talk to our kids about.”

The show’s future is uncertain, and Jiménez García says it needs to re-identify with what it is before it moves forward. She’s hopeful that it will.

“It’s endured this long,” she said. “I don’t see why some new platform is impossible. But I think that if they do revamp or come back with another platform, I think that they should really go back to their roots of who they are.”