This season the show will broaden its psychological scope to include strategies for managing a tough issue for humans in general, and children in particular. It’s no longer just about learning your ABCs. Meanwhile, it’s also taking “deep dives” into subjects deemed essential to today’s children as determined through extensive educational research. Since Parente took over as executive producer in 2005, the show has continued to tinker with format and content, going from magazine style to something more segmented and easily digestible in the YouTube era. This fall, the one-hour series also launched a condensed half-hour version to air on PBS Kids in the afternoons. The show even has a robust Vine channel, with more than 42,000 followers. “At this point, the show is such a well-oiled machine, there are times I think if all of us went away, the show would still get done,” says Carol-Lynn Parente, executive producer of “Sesame Street.” “And that’s the challenge: not to let the machine get in the way of evolution and innovation.”Įven decades after its debut, the show remains a powerhouse, generating more than $46.5 million in merchandising last year and with a steady stream of viral videos on its YouTube channel that has more than a million subscribers and more than a billion video views.
