JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Sesame Workshop, the parent company of "Sesame Street," announced yesterday that it is significantly downsizing. The move comes just two months after Max said it would discontinue streaming this children's program after 2025. What led to this decision and what could the potential impact be on employees and viewers? NPR's Elizabeth Blair is here in the studio with more. Hi there.
ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: Hi.
SUMMERS: So Elizabeth, what can you tell us about these layoffs?
BLAIR: The layoffs started yesterday. Sesame Workshop said it needed to reduce the size of the organization because of the changing media and funding landscape, and to ensure that it could fulfill its mission for years to come. I interviewed Phoebe Gilpin, who - one of the employees who was laid off. She said that Sesame Workshop CEO Sherrie Westin told staff that 20% of the workforce would be affected. Sesame Workshop would not confirm that number. As of 2022, the company had about 850 employees, so 20% is about 170 people. But, again, we don't know for sure if that's the number.
SUMMERS: OK, but what do we know about who's being laid off? Are we talking puppeteers for, like, Big Bird?
BLAIR: No, not Big Bird, not Elmo, not Cookie Monster - Sesame Workshop says no puppeteers were laid off, but content creators and administrative staff are among those affected. Sesame Workshop is a nonprofit, so its mission is to help educate kids. So in addition to puppeteers and writers and celebrity guests, you have child development experts and people who work with schools, and Phoebe Gilpin was one of those.
PHOEBE GILPIN: We're struggling to imagine how people that are remaining are going to be able to fulfill on this mission, to have the impact in the world that we want to have every single day.
SUMMERS: Now, Elizabeth, you wrote about this yesterday, and you noted that Sesame Workshop is facing this very difficult media landscape, which is what the company said led to these layoffs. Any more specifics about what they meant?
BLAIR: Right. I mean, every media company is facing this changing...
SUMMERS: Yep.
BLAIR: ...Media landscape. I mean, people might remember that back in 2015, "Sesame Street" signed a deal with what was then HBO and now is Max, and that gave the show an infusion of cash that allowed them to produce more new episodes every season. But last December, Max announced it would not renew its contract with the show. The economics of the media business are not pretty right now. I talked to media consultant Gary Knell. He's a former CEO and president of Sesame Workshop and of NPR.
GARY KNELL: The traditional kids' media business has been massively disrupted. So the linear cable networks which dominated the field, like Nickelodeon, Disney, Cartoon Network and, to some extent, PBS Kids have really had a massive drop-off in viewership and have been pretty much replaced by YouTube, who now is by far the largest distributor of kids' content. Kids are going for short-form video content like everyone else.
SUMMERS: And, Elizabeth, I have to ask you in service of all the families, all of the parents and the kids who love "Sesame Street," does any of this mean that "Sesame Street" is going to be affected immediately?
BLAIR: No, fear not.
SUMMERS: Thank you.
BLAIR: New episodes will continue on Max through September. Reruns of "Sesame Street" will continue on PBS. And Sesame Workshop says production of season 56 will begin next month. But Sesame Workshop has not yet announced a new distributor.
SUMMERS: That is NPR correspondent Elizabeth Blair. Thank you so much.
BLAIR: Thank you, Juana.
(SOUNDBITE OF TOOTS THIELEMANS, ET AL.'S "SESAME STREET CLOSING THEME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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