InnovationIn Children’sEducationalPrograming

Christina HanMarc LippmanAngela ZugayShay-Jahen Merritté 1

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IntroductionSesame Street is an American educational children’s television series and a pioneer of the contemporary educational television standard, combining both education and entertainment. Sesame Street is well known for its Muppets characters created by Jim Henson. It premiered on November 10, 1969, and is the longest running children’s program on television. In 1966, The Carnegie Institute hired Joan Ganz Cooney to study how the media could be used to help young children, especially those from low-income families, learn and prepare for school.Cooney proposed using television’s “most engaging traits”, including high production values, sophisticated writing, and quality film and animation, to reach the largest audience possible. Sesame Street was built around a single, breakthrough insight: that if you can hold the attention of children, you can educate them.

Million Weekly Viewers

Continuously Running Seasons

Country Broadcasts 2

First children’s show to incorporate an early childhood curriculum.

Format developed through scientific research in cognitive development.

Studied how kids learn from TV, developed format based on findings and experimentation.

Resulting format: 30-90 second clips featuring interaction of live & imaginary characters, incorporating educational themes

30-90 Sec.

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Spun off from philanthropic nonprofit Carnegie CorporationIn the mid-1960’s: Lloyd Morrisett, VP studying cognitive development and the education gap affecting underprivileged children is inspired by his 3-year-old daughter’s ability to memorize commercial jingles. Forms hypothesis that television, now in 97% of U.S. homes, can be used to educate children. He then contacts TV producer Joan Ganz Cooney and commissions her to do a 3-month study, producing the report “The Potential Uses of Television in Pre-School Education,” which becomes basis for development. Carnegie partners with The Ford Foundation and secures additional funding from U.S. Dept of Education to form “Children’s Television Network” as a development and production company for what will eventually be Sesame Street.

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The Children’s TV Market Before Sesame StreetPrimarily entertainment-focused

• With proliferation of TV in 1950’s, children’s programs were mostly live-action variety shows, most notably puppet-hosted “Howdy Doody”.

• By the 1960s, live action was almost entirely replaced by animation: The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Space Ghost.

• Some popular live-action host-centered shows remained; Captain Kangaroo, from 1955, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood introduced 1968.

• While some of these shows had elements of education, none focused on a preschool education curriculum.

HowdyDoody

Rocky &Bullwinkle

Mr.Rogers

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ProcessPurpose: Study how the media could be used to help young children, especially those from low-income families, learn and prepare for school.

Goals & Priorities For Each Season

• Symbolic Representation• Physical Environment• Social Environment.

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• Curriculum planning seminars.

• Producers and writers with a crash course in child development, psychology, and preschool education.

• Involved entertainment people, educators and psychologists.

The Muppet characters were created to fill specific curriculum needs. For example, Oscar the Grouch was designed to teach children about their positive and negative emotions.

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Test episodes for testing whether children (preschoolers) found them comprehensible and appealing. Used laboratory-oriented research. Results were “generally very positive. Children paid more attention to the Muppet segments than the street segments with the humans that all of the learning took place. Decision to defy the recommendations of their advisers. Henson and his team created Muppets (BigBird and Oscar) that could specifically interact with the human actors, and that preschoolers are more sophisticated television viewers than originally thought. This testing was strongly influenced by behaviorism which was a prominent movement in psychology in the late 1960s.

The Distractor Method• Two children at a time were brought into the laboratory and shown an episode on a television monitor and a slide show next to it. • The slides would change every seven seconds, and researchers recorded when the children’s attention was diverted from the episode.

Eyes on the Screen Method• Modified distractor method• Collected data from larger groups of children simultaneously. • Tested for more “natural” distractions, or the distractions that other children provide in group viewing situations. • Engagement measure, which recorded children’s more active responses to an episode, like laughing and dancing to the music.

Prevailing understanding thinks kids have short attention spans. Magazine format, tells a story in 30-second segments. Cognitive psychologists recommended never to mix Muppets and people, it could confuse the kids. The lessons were in the ‘street scene’ portion of the show with humans (about 10min of lessons took about 45 minutes to tell due to these interludes).

Radically redesign format, ratings decline, competing programs. Traditional magazine-format was not the most effective way to hold their attention. How children’s viewing habits had changed in thirty years. Show was produced for three to five year olds, children began watching it at a younger age. As a result, the target age for Sesame Street shifted downward, from four years to three years.

Short segment that targeted the developmental age of the show’s newer viewers began to be shown at the end of each episode. Used traditional elements (animation, Muppets, music, and live-action film). Depended heavily on repetition. Took place in a stylized crayon-drawing universe. Elmo was chosen as the host because he had always tested well with them.

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1960s

1990s

2000s

Interludes Lessons Elmo’s World

Evolution

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Spin-Offs Other ShowsVideos & MoviesMerchandisingTheme ParkVideo GamesBooksToysClothes

Tickle Me Elmo is one of the most successful toy fads ever. Over a million of the dolls have been sold since its introduction in 1996. It proved so popular that shortages led to price gougers selling the $30 toy for more than $1500.

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Supportive Studies

Studies on Sesame Street’s educational influence

Most recent longitudinal study published in early 2000 which was based on a low-income neighborhood in Kansas City:

• Showed a positive effect on the vocabulary and math skills of preschoolers who watched an average of two hours a week.

• Showed positive effects on readings and achievement lasted through high school.

• Showed that kids as young as 2 can count 1 to 20 and up to 100 if counting by 10s.

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Societal ImpactSesame Street is the first show to present a number of social issues to children for the first time, several of these include:

Low incomeRace MixingAIDS (in Africa)Single motherhoodMilitary FamiliesKosovo and ethnic differencesReligionPregnancyHealthy eating/public health Environmental AwarenessWorld AwarenessHome FiresAdoptionTerrorismDeath

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Sustainable Points of Competitive Differentiation

• First Mover Advantage• Brand Strength• Viewer Loyalty• “Customer” Centricity• Intelectual Property

DoubleBottomLine

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Sesame Street needs to meet a double bottom line. Not only must it stainability maintain and grow its viewer base and secure funding to maintain its financial viability, it must also show that it meeting its social goals of educating youth who have limited educational opportunities.

151969 1979 1989 1999 2009

Viewership Trends by DecadeIn Relation to Show Format.

7Million

9Million

8Million

10Million

12Million

161969 1973 1984

8M | 8M

27M | 17.6M

63M | 60M

145M | 140M

2009

revenues | expenses

% Royalties & Licensing Revenues% Donations & Grants

Financial Data Trends

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Innovation Framework: 3 Types

TransformativeIncorporating Pre-School Curriculum &

Applying scientific method to children’s educationl television.

TransitionalAltering the show’s format.

IncrementalIntroducing new characters.

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Innovation Framework: Game Changer

Customer Centric

InnovationGame

Changing

MotivatingPurpose &

Values

StretchingGoals

ChoicefulStrategies

UniqueCore

Strengths

EnablingStructure

Consistent& ReliableSystems

ConnectedCulture

InspiringLeadership

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Thank You.What QuestionsDo You Have?

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SourcesAlexander, Allison. “Children And Television.” The Museum of Broadcast Communications. Web. 8 Mar. 2010. “History of Sesame Street |.” History of Things. Web. 08 Mar. 2010. <http://www.historyofthings.com/history-of-sesame-street>.

Borgenicht, David. Sesame Street Unpaved: Scripts, Stories, Secrets, and Songs. New York: Hyperion, 1998. Print.

Davis, Michael. Street Gang: the Complete History of Sesame Street. New York: Penguin, 2008. Print.

Fisch, Shalom. Children’s Learning From Educational Television: Sesame Street and Beyond. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlaum Associates Inc, 2004. Print.

Gardner, Elysa. “At 40, ‘Sesame Street’ Is in a Constant State of Renewal.” USA Today. 10 Nov. 2009. Web. 22 Feb. 2010. <www.usatoday.com>.

Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point. NYC: Little, Brown and Company, 2000. Print.

Guernsey, Lisa. “‘Sesame Street’ The Show That Counts.” Newsweek. 23 May 2009. Web. 22 Feb. 2010. <www.newsweek.com>. Salamon, Julie (2002-06-09). “Children’s TV catches up with how kids watch”. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/09/arts/children-s-tv-catches-up-with-how-kids-watch.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all. Retrieved 2010-03-05.

“Sesame Street: Forty Years of Sweeping the Clouds Away.” Sesame Workshop. Web. 08 Mar. 2010.

Sesame Street and the Reform of Children’s Television. Johns Hopkins Univ Pr, 2008. Print. Wilson, Craig (2009-01-02). “’Sesame Street’ is 40 but young at heart”. USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2008-12-30-sesame-street_N.htm. Retrieved 2010-03-05.