Sesame Street Is Moving to HBO, and the Symbolism Is Crushing

I’ve been fascinated by the rhetoric of headlines surrounding the “Sesame Street moves to HBO” story.

* HBO gentrifies ‘Sesame Street’ –VentureBeat
* Sesame Street Episodes Will Shrink to Half an Hour –Time
* Sesame Street Is Heading to HBO, and Getting Even Bigger –Esquire
* This episode of Sesame Street brought to you by the letters HBO –Financial Times

In short, Sesame Street was founded to help low-income kids keep up with their more affluent peers. That is literally why it exists. It succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations. And now it is becoming the property of a premium cable network, so that a program launched to help poor kids keep up with rich kids is now being paywalled so that rich kids can watch it before poor kids can. —Slate