HBO to carry ‘Sesame Street’; PBS to continue airing show

Kristen Baldwin, Editor and Chief with Yahoo TV said it’s always a big fear that Sesame Street is going to lose its funding.

“Sesame Street” has sealed a five-year contract with HBO that will exclusively air all the first-run episodes.

Under a new partnership announced Thursday, August 13, 2015, by Sesame Workshop and HBO, the premium cable channel will carry the next five seasons of “Sesame Street” on HBO and its related platforms.

After HBO will air “Sesame Street” exclusively for nine months, it will then be available on PBS and HBO’s streaming outlets. A few small deals with Amazon and Netflix allowed some Sesame Street episodes to air there, but the actual production of new shows got slashed to a simple 18 episodes per season, down from episode orders in the 30s during previous seasons. The new episodes will start running on HBO, a unit of Time Warner Inc., in the late fall this year.

But “Sesame Street” fans accustomed to watching it on PBS won’t feel any disappointment.

Richard Plepler, chairman and CEO of HBO, and Michael Lombardo, president, HBO Programming, said in a statement: “Home Box Office is committed to bringing the most groundbreaking and creative shows to its audience”.

Industry analysts say this is part of HBO’s effort to boost subscriptions for their new internet streaming service.

As reported by nbcnews, HBO executives hailed the show as “the most important preschool education program in the history of television”. While canceling cable-TV service can be “painful”, it’s easy for people to drop online services like HBO Now if they don’t have enough content to appeal to all members of the family, especially children, Greenfield said.