"Street Gang: The
Complete History of Sesame Street" by Michael Davis
The broadcasting industry has always been aware of its
educational potential and is often idealistic about its service to
children. In the 1946 book "Here Is Television" author Thomas
Hutchinson states, "Educational or informative programs on
television open vistas that virtually stagger the imagination... No
longer will low paid educators teach the three R's to small boys
and girls in isolated rural districts. Instead every country
school in the world will have a large screen television receiver,
in each classroom."
Hutchinson believed that "there is nothing in the world that
cannot be taught by television," but as the visual medium took over
the nation's living rooms it seemed that the real potential of TV
to instruct both children and adults remained undeveloped while
children, as is their nature, were absorbing all manner of new
knowledge from programs and commercials.
There were some good kidshows during those early days of
television. "The Small
Fry Club" on the short-lived DuMont Network featured an
avuncular Big Brother Bob Emery with a human cast of animal
characters who taught about nature, music, health and shared daily
delights (it was the first TV program to be aired five days a
week). It even draw an appreciative adult audience -- orchestra
conductor Arturo Toscanini was one of its big fans. Over on NBC-TV,
Howdy Doody
premiered in 1947 with Buffalo Bob Smith and a cast of
marionettes. There was also a crazy clown named Clarabelle,
played by actor Bob Keeshan, who left to create Captain Kangaroo.
Many of these programs had well-designed educational content --
Captain Kangaroo and Ding Dong
School with Dr. Frances Horwich ("Miss Frances") on NBC were
highly regarded by educators and parents. But it took a whole
new system of broadcasting, Public Television, to bring the
nation's pre-schoolers a TV show that would systematically prepare
them for further education, teaching letters, numbers and
relationships while they were having a wonderful time.
"Sesame Street" premiered
on PBS on November 10, 1969 and is the longest-running children's
program on American television.* At age forty it is now being
watched by some of the grandchildren of those who learned their
ABCs and 1-2-3s from "Sesame Street". WSKG is joining in the Sesame
40 Festival with art contests, an open house birthday party at our
studios and a special OFF THE PAGE broadcast with Michael
Davis, author of the new book "Street Gang: The Complete
History of Sesame Street."
Sesame Street began as a flash of
brilliance that struck like a bolt from the gods. [Producer
Joan Ganz] Cooney was its mother of invention, while Lloyd N.
Morrisett, a well-connected vice president at the Carnegie Corporation, was its
financial godfather. Sesame's moment of conception occurred
at a dinner party at Cooney's apartment, when Morrissett and his
wife were discussing how their three-year-old daughter, Sarah, had
become transfixed by television. She would sit in front of a
test pattern at 6:30 a.m., waiting for the cartoons to appear at
7:00. It was the same thing millions of kids were doing all
across the country that confounded Cooney.
-- from "Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street"
Several veterans of Captain Kangaroo were in the "street gang" and
Davis traces the lineage of the program as well as the
institutional development of Children's Television Workshop (now
called Sesame Workshop) and the planning and research that
ensued. "Sesame Street" was deliberately designed to be
meaningful and recognizable to inner-city children, its content
easily blended with Head Start and
similar efforts for minority and underprivileged youngsters.
But Davis's book is primarily a story of people working together
for a TV show that could teach and entertain and be accessible at
many levels. They are as rich a cast of characters as any
novel and their fates are triumphant and tragic. "Street
Gang" opens with the scene at the funeral of brilliant puppeteer
Jim Henson, as untimely a death as any. His Muppets were and are the
heart of "Sesame Street". There was also the loss of actor
Will Lee, who played Mr. Hooper, the candy store owner. His
passing was noted (and his life celebrated) in a tearful "Sesame
Street" episode that broached the meaning of death in terms that
small children could comprehend. "Street Gang" prints the
entire script of that moving scene.
Michael
Davis is a former editor of TV Guide magazine and
worked as a teacher in the Head Start program in Tompkins County
and was a reporter for the Ithaca Journal. He will
be joined on OFF THE PAGE by Lonna McKeon Pierce,
a professional storyteller, teacher/librarian at the MacArthur
School in Binghamton and the mother of five children (now grown,
but all who learned their ABCs watching channel 46).
To add to the conversation about "Sesame Street" with host Bill Jaker and his guests post a
message here to OffThePage@WSKG.ORG.
* "Andy Pandy" on British television dates to 1950 but
has been on and off BBC-TV intermittently, in limited production.
There have been over 4,000 "Sesame Street" programs.
