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

Post was last modified on 14 Aug 2015 12:48 am

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Dennis G. Jerz

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