Netflix takes to the ‘Street’

Sesame Workshop, the educational nonprofit that makes Sesame Street, has announced that S is for switch.

New seasons of of the kids’ show, along with older Sesame Street episodes, will soon be available on Netflix worldwide. All future new episodes will also release the same day on PBS stations and PBS KIDS digital platforms in the U.S.

So, to be clear: You won’t need a Netflix subscription to access new episodes on the day they air, but you will need one to watch older episodes.

“This unique public-private partnership will enable us to bring our research-based curriculum to young children around the world with Netflix’s global reach, while ensuring children in communities across the U.S. continue to have free access on public television to the Sesame Street they love,” Sesame Workshop wrote in a May 19 news release. More details about how long this agreement will be in place are still forthcoming. 

Elmo, Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster and the rest of the gang’s move to Netflix to start season 56 comes after Warner Bros. Discovery didn’t renew its deal for Sesame Street on Max (soon again to be HBO Max), where the show has been streaming since 2020. It had been airing on HBO since 2016.

The Netflix/Sesame Street partnership also comes during a rough time for public media. President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media” at the beginning of May. The order instructed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other federal agencies “to cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS” and further requires that they work to root out indirect sources of public financing for the news organizations. 

Trump said NPR and PBS are “the radical left ‘monsters’ that so badly hurt our country” in a Truth Social post in April, and the White House said those outlets “receive millions from taxpayers to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.’”

Ah, yes, teaching kids to count. Radical woke propaganda. And most of the money NPR and PBS receive from the federal government goes to local stations like KERA in D-FW and Austin PBS in Texas instead of national networks, but I digress.

(After the executive order, someone made a fake LinkedIn profile for Elmo, with a post saying he was “open to work”: “Unfortunately Elmo was recently laid off because of the federal budget cuts.” The post has since disappeared.)

This isn’t the first time Republicans have taken issue with Sesame Street. Back in the ‘90s, then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich tried and failed to get rid of congressional funding for public media. Mitt Romney called for the same during his 2012 presidential campaign. Lately, Elmo and the rest of the gang have weirdly been the subject of stupid culture wars from Tucker Carlson, Ted Cruz and Jordan Peterson. So it seems the Trump administration has come closest to killing Big Bird, but the tall yellow avian lives on.

It’s unclear what this means in the long run for Sesame Street. Streamers are fickle, and who knows what will happen whenever Netflix’s contract is up. A future administration may call for more funding for public media. But for now, expect to hear the familiar “tudum” before hearing “Can You Tell Me How To Get To Sesame Street?”