Influence of Sesame Street facts for kids
The children's television program Sesame Street premiered in 1969 to high ratings, positive reviews, and some controversy, which have continued during its history. Even though the show aired on only 67% of American televisions at the time of its premiere, it earned a 3.3 Nielsen rating, or 1.9 million households. By its tenth anniversary in 1979, 9 million American children under the age of six were watching Sesame Street daily. Its ratings declined in the 1990s, due to societal changes. A survey conducted in 1996 found that by the age of three, 95% of all American children had watched it. By its fortieth anniversary in 2009, it was ranked the fifteenth most popular children's show.
According to writer Michael Davis, Sesame Street is "perhaps the most vigorously researched, vetted, and fretted-over program". By 2001, there were over 1,000 research studies regarding its efficacy, impact, and effect on American culture. Two landmark summative evaluations, conducted by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in 1970 and 1971, demonstrated that Sesame Street had a significant educational impact on its viewers. Additional studies conducted throughout the show's history demonstrated that the show continued to have a positive effect on its young viewers.
Sesame Street has also been the subjects of many controversies throughout its long run on television. In 1970, a commission in Mississippi voted to exclude the show from its state educational TV programming. The controversy surrounding the show stemmed from cultural and historical reasons regarding children and television's effect on them. Latino and feminists groups criticized Sesame Street for its depictions of some groups, but its producers have worked to address their concerns throughout the years. By 2009, Sesame Street had received 118 Emmy Awards, more than any other television series.
Ratings
When Sesame Street premiered in 1969, it aired on only 67.6% of American televisions, but it earned a 3.3 Nielsen rating, or 1.9 million households. The Children's Television Workshop (CTW), the organization that oversaw the production of Sesame Street, insisted that its seemingly low ratings were misleading. They found that although a small percentage of all viewers watched Sesame Street, approximately a quarter of all preschoolers watched it regularly. Ninety percent of households who viewed the show had children under the age of six.
In the winter of 1970, partly as a response to criticism that they were not reaching their intended audience, the CTW conducted a poll of four urban neighborhoods in New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. The results of the poll were positive in three out of the four neighborhoods and confirmed the show's high viewership. Sesame Street's high ratings increased during its second season, and Nielsen reported high audience loyalty. Gerald S. Lesser, CTW's first advisory board chair, reported rumors about the show becoming a fad among college students. Its ratings steadily increased for the first five seasons, and Nielsen reported that Sesame Street had the highest ratings of any PBS program. In 1985, the Workshop estimated that 20% of its regular viewers consisted of "adult-only households".
By the show's tenth anniversary in 1979, 9 million American children under the age of six were watching Sesame Street daily. Four out of five children had watched it over a six-week period, and 90% of children from low-income inner-city homes regularly viewed the show. According to a 1993 survey conducted by the US Department of Education, out of the show's 6.6 million viewers, 2.4 million kindergartners regularly watched it. 77% of preschoolers watched it once a week, and 86% of kindergartners, first-, and second-grade students had watched it once a week before starting school. The show reached most young children in almost all demographic groups, most significantly economically disadvantaged children; 88% of children from low-income families and 90% of both African-American and Latino children watched the show before entering kindergarten. Over 80% of children from all minority language groups watched it before starting school. Children from the poorest communities were most likely to be regular viewers, as were younger children. Children whose parents did not read to them regularly were less likely to be regular viewers, and children of highly educated parents stopped viewing earlier than children from disadvantaged households.
The show's ratings significantly decreased in the early 1990s, when children' viewing habits and the television marketplace had changed. In 1969, the choices in children's programming were limited, but the growth of the home-video industry during the 1980s and the boom in children's programming during the 90s on cable channels like Nickelodeon, which were directly influenced by Sesame Street, resulted in lower ratings for Sesame Street. In 2002, The New York Times reported that "learning to click the remote control has become a developmental milestone, like crawling and walking". The producers responded to these societal changes by making large-scale structural changes to the show.
By 2006, Sesame Street had become "the most widely viewed children's television show in the world", with 20 international independent versions and broadcasts in over 120 countries. A 1996 survey found that 95% of all American preschoolers had watched the show by the time they were three years old. In 2006, it was estimated that 75 million Americans had watched the series as children. By the show's 40th anniversary in 2009, it was ranked the fifteenth most popular children's show on television, and by its 50th anniversary in 2019, the show had 100% brand awareness globally. In 2018, the show was the second-highest-rated program on PBS Kids.
Effect
According to Davis, Sesame Street is "perhaps the most vigorously researched, vetted, and fretted-over program". By 2001, there were over 1,000 research studies regarding its efficacy, impact, and effect on American culture. The CTW solicited the Educational Testing Service (ETS) to conduct its summative research. ETS' two "landmark" summative evaluations, conducted in 1970 and 1971, demonstrated that Sesame Street had a significant educational impact on its viewers. These studies provided the majority of the early educational effects of Sesame Street and have been cited in other studies of the effects of television on young children. Additional studies conducted throughout Sesame Street's history demonstrated that the show continued to have a positive effect on its young viewers.
Lesser believed that Sesame Street research "may have conferred a new respectability upon the studies of the effects of visual media upon children". He also believed that the show had the same effect on the prestige in the television industry of producing shows for children. Historian Robert Morrow, in his book Sesame Street and the Reform of Children's Television, which chronicled the show's influence on children's television and on the television industry as a whole, reported that many critics of commercial television saw Sesame Street as a "straightforward illustration for reform". Les Brown, a writer for Variety, saw in Sesame Street "a hope for a more substantial future" for television.
The networks responded by creating more high-quality television programs, but that many saw them as "appeasement gestures". In spite of the CTW's effectiveness in creating a popular show, commercial television "made only a limited effort to emulate CTW's methods", and did not use a curriculum or evaluate what children learned from them. Morrow reported that by the mid-1970s, commercial television abandoned their experiments with creating better children's programming. Other critics hoped that Sesame Street, with its depiction of a functioning, multicultural community, would nurture racial tolerance in its young viewers.
As critic Richard Roeper has stated, perhaps one of the strongest indicators of the influence of Sesame Street have been the enduring rumors and urban legends surrounding the show and its characters, especially about Bert and Ernie.
