Cold Open

It’s 6:30 AM on a chilly December morning in 1965, in Manhattan, New York.

Lloyd Morrisett, an eminent child psychologist, is disturbed from his sleep by a high-pitched, constant sound that he knows all too well.

Slowly, he climbs out of bed so as not to disturb his sleeping wife.

He opens his bedroom door and walks out into the hall. Making his way into the living room, Lloyd finds the same scene he has every morning this week. Sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV, Lloyd’s three-year-old daughter Sarah, is patiently waiting for her cartoons to start. On-screen is a generic test card that precedes the morning’s programming.

Lloyd chuckles at the familiar sight and sits down on the floor next to his daughter. He teases her, asking if this is a good show, knowing full well it’s just the same static image of various circles and shapes, having played for nearly half an hour.

Lloyd mutes the TV and makes his way into the kitchen and starts to make his morning coffee. As the water percolates, he pokes his head back into the living room. Sarah is still transfixed by the screen.

As an experimental psychologist, this situation fascinates Lloyd. He feels in his bones that there’s something here. A problem to fix, or an opportunity to grasp.

As Lloyd prepares his coffee, he catches Sarah beginning to hum. And for the life of him, he can’t figure out what the tune is. It’s not something they’ve listened to together on the record player, and Sarah’s not in school yet, so she can’t have learnt it there.

Lloyd takes his coffee and rejoins his daughter in front of the TV. And it’s then that it hits him. His daughter Sarah is humming the jingle for a soap commercial.

All of a sudden, pieces start to fall into place in his head. The addiction to television, the way it’s taught his daughter songs and music, and information through sheer repetition. There is an opportunity here after all.

Lloyd Morissett is about to have an epiphany. Over the next few years, he will start to investigate the educational power of television. This pursuit will lead him to the door of Joan Gantz Cooney, a prominent documentary filmmaker in Manhattan.

The two will begin to research the impact of television on children’s minds. And together, they’ll form the Children’s Television Workshop, out of which, the iconic “Sesame Street” will be born, changing the landscape of children’s TV forever, when its first episode premieres on November 10th, 1969.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is November 10th, 1969: “Sesame Street” Debuts.

Act One: Documenting Vs Making a Difference

It’s February 1966, in an upscale apartment in Manhattan.

Joan Gantz Cooney fills up the flutes of her guests. She is a television documentary maker well-known for making impactful and award-winning programs focusing on poverty. But tonight, she’s hosting a fancy dinner party for some of her friends and colleagues.

She pours the last of the bottle of champion into the glass of Lloyd Morissett, an early year’s educator and Vice President of the Carnegie Corporation, a philanthropic venture specializing in children’s education.

It’s been two months since Lloyd watched his daughter stay glued to the TV test card in his living room. And since that moment, Lloyd has thought of little else than television’s potential to help teach preschool children.

He brings up the topic with Joan and asks her opinion directly, ‘Can TV help kids learn?’ Joan doesn’t have an immediate answer, but a conversational seed is planted, and over the course of the evening the two discuss everything from John's work helping impoverished children to the current state of Kid’s TV.

Joan argues that hit television shows like Batman, Lassie, and Howdy Doody can do little to make children’s lives better - besides keeping them entertained for an hour or two. Lloyd counters that children are going to be watching something, so why not try to make that something good.

After some time, and plenty of back and forth, they both agree that Joan’s documentaries, as powerful as they are, are likely only speaking about an issue, rather than directly affecting it. They also conclude that there’s untapped promise in the medium of television, especially for children.

Less than a week after the party, Joan is given funding from Lloyd and the Carnegie Corporation to set up a feasibility study into how effective a show aimed at preschoolers could be in helping their education.

Joan gets to work immediately. She crosses the country, speaking with as many teachers, educators, and child psychologists as she can. She seeks out differing viewpoints on what television can do, discovering the benefits and the pitfalls.

And as Joan carries out her research, her study becomes the talk of the educational community. She and Lloyd form a nonprofit called Children’s Television Workshop, and the funds available to them grow larger and larger. Soon, Joan finds herself with a budget of over $8 million to make one season of a new children’s TV show. Its mission is to prepare kids - especially those from deprived or underprivileged communities - with the tools they need to enter school on an even educational footing.

Up until this moment, children’s television has been seen as a means of entertainment only. But Joan is savvy enough to know that solely making educational shows isn’t enough either. Her show has to be both educational and entertaining. And to that end, she sets up meetings with a variety of animators and filmmakers, trying to discover someone who shares her vision.

Eventually, she finds her partner in Jim Henson, a puppeteer and commercials maker, from Mississippi. Their initial meeting though, does not get off to a promising start.

At a high-end restaurant in Manhattan, Joan and a companion wait for Jim to arrive. And as they sit and talk, Joan sees a bearded man out of the corner of her eye. He’s fidgety and dressed in a completely different manner to everyone else in the restaurant. Joan notes to her companion how strange and even terrifying the man appears. Her companion laughs and informs her that the man she’s afraid of is the man she is here to meet, Jim Henson.

Following this initial confusion though, the two hit it off immediately. Joan pitches Jim the idea of her show, telling him how it will inform and educate as well as entertain, and how it will showcase a multicultural cast and be set on an urban street. This pitch is music to Jim’s ears, aligning perfectly with his philosophies and ethics. Toward the end of the meeting, Jim asks for a name for the show. And Joan tells him their working title is “Sesame Street.”

With her team in place, Joan can turn her attention to production. She knows how much is riding on the “Sesame Street” pilot. To cover her back, she makes a series of test shows and screens them to local children, gauging their opinion on its educational value and format.

And the results are awful. The children are bored and restless. They don’t engage with the material and even worse for Joan, they don’t seem to be learning anything either. After three years of research and millions of dollars of funding spent, Joan’s project is in danger, with the air date, only months away.

So, over the next sixteen weeks, Joan and her team will pull all the stops to get “Sesame Street” working to its full potential. Using her talented crew - and pushing back on conventional wisdom - Joan will test boundaries and receive incredible results.

Act Two: The Birth of Big Bird

It’s June 4th, 1969, in Manhattan, New York.

Puppeteer and artist Jim Henson is hunched over a series of storyboards, scribbling away frantically. His pen can barely keep up with his ideas. As soon as one concept is down on paper, Jim begins work on the next. He’s running on fumes, but still, he carries on, filling page after page in minutes, until sketches line his desk.

Jim just got off the phone with Joan Gantz Cooney, the head of the Children’s Television Network and the lead creator of “Sesame Street.” She called with bad news. Despite the years of research and hard work she and many others have put into making “Sesame Street” a show that should both enthrall and educate America’s children, the test episodes that Jim helped to create have bombed.

But one part of the show that the children appeared to engage with more than any other is Jim’s puppets, or as he likes to call them… muppets. Whenever these colorful characters were on screen, the children lit up. And whenever human actors replaced them, the children then got bored again.

While the received wisdom is that fantastical muppets and their human counterparts should never share the screen, Joan has decided to flock that idea and mix the two together. With a November air date looming, that means a lot more work for Jim and his team and a very little time to complete it.

But Jim loves a challenge, and he loves his work. He also believes in Joan’s vision for “Sesame Street” and the good he thinks the show can do for children all over the country. So, Jim is willing to do whatever it takes to make the show as good as it can be, even if the time constraints are frightening.

As well as working on animations that teach numbers, letters, and other preschool ideas, Joan’s feedback means that Jim has to come up with more characters to inhabit Sesame Street. The set for the show is made to look like an inner-city community, with the idea being that around every corner there will be a new muppet for kids to be wowed by.

In a bid to add more fantasy to “Sesame Street,” Jim imagines two new characters. One is an eight-foot-tall, but childlike, yellow bird that Jim names Big Bird. The other is a grumpy, furry creature with bushy eyebrows, whom he calls Oscar. While Oscar is a static character, confined to his garbage can, Big Bird is designed to walk around the set. Jim asks his builder to construct him in a way that gives the puppeteer inside the freedom to move fluidly and interact with, not just the other muppets, but the human characters who live on the street too.

The perfect costume is soon ready. But Jim still needs the right person to bring Big Bird and Oscar to life. During his yearly trip to the Puppeteers of America Festival, Jim meets talented performer Carol Spinney. Jim is so impressed with Carol’s extravaganza of multiple puppets, that Carol becomes the first name on Jim’s list to operate and perform these new characters.

It’s not comfortable being in the Big Bird suit. Carol has to stretch his arm as far as he can to operate the creature’s head. But he falls in love with the big yellow, hopeful muppet, as well as the grouchy Oscar. 

As these characters and many others come to life, so too does Sesame Street. Joan and Jim look around at the world they’ve created and grin. The joy is infectious and soon the rest of the show begins to click.

With the Muppets as the face of the project, Joan and Jim prepare talking points, detailing what they hope Sesame Street will be, a combination of entertainment and education that will guide children through their early years with kindness and consideration. Over the next few days, word will begin to spread about “Sesame Street” and its mission to help educate children, as well as the raft of characters that Jim Henson and his team have created. Joan will appear in numerous newspapers and magazines to try and sell the idea that entertainment and education can co-exist, hand in hand.

After several years of work, the fruit of Joan’s labor will be coming to fruition. All that will be left to do is air the show and hope the public will love “Sesame Street” as much as she does.

Act Three: A Smash Hit

It’s November 10th, 1969, in the office of Joan Gantz Cooney in Manhattan.

Joan sits at her desk, staring at her phone. It hasn’t stopped ringing all morning. Sesame Street has just aired for the first time in hundreds of thousands of living rooms. After great early reviews from critics, the show already had a buzz. But what Joan is witnessing now in terms of press attention and audience feedback is unprecedented.

As fast as those in her office work, they can’t possibly answer all the calls coming their way. Praise pours in from the public, from the press, and from educators. Every commercial entity in America is calling too. They all want a piece of “Sesame Street.” 

The impact of the show is immediate. By the start of the school year in 1970, teachers and educators concurred that the children who are watching “Sesame Street” are better prepared for the education system. The rudimentary numeracy and literacy skills Joan set out to teach are being showcased in classrooms up and down the country.

And within a year, two more series of “Sesame Street” are greenlit and Big Bird graces the cover of TIME magazine. Merchandising rights and international sales mean Joan will no longer have to rely on public funding for the Children’s Television Workshop. And this new independence gives Joan the opportunity to teach the way she wants to, allowing her to take on challenging subjects like death and bullying in the way she thinks is right, without being beholden to governmental questions.

Unparalleled success will follow. “Sesame Street” will become the most widely viewed children’s program in history. By the mid-90s, a staggering 95% of all US preschoolers will have watched “Sesame Street” by the time they’re 3 years old. And the show will not just teach the children of America. “Sesame Street” will go on to become an international hit, with versions in over twenty languages playing in over 120 countries.

Over the next five decades, the show and its multicultural cast will help many children feel accepted in a world where they once did not. Topics such as adoption, AIDS, and autism will all be tackled by the show in careful and creative ways. In 2019, “Sesame Street” will celebrate its 50th Anniversary becoming one of the longest-running TV shows in the world, a legacy that began with its debut on November 10th, 1969.

Outro

Next on History Daily. November 13th, 1985. The volcanic eruption of Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia spurs a deadly mudslide that buries a city and kills over 20,000 people.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Mollie Baack.

Music by Lindsay Graham.

This episode is written and researched by Owen Paul Nicholls.

Executive Producers are Alexandra Currie-Buckner for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.