How Sesame Workshop and Fred Rogers Productions Keep True to Their Mission 55 Years Later
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When Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood debuted in 1968, they didn’t just usher in a golden age of puppetry on TV. They also set standards for inclusion and education in children’s programming that the industry is still trying to live up to, decades later. Especially at the studios that launched them.
Developed for Children’s Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop), Sesame Street paired producers with educators to create programming designed to support and empower young viewers from lower income and underrepresented backgrounds, and populated its Manhattan-inspired set not only with a colorful menagerie of Jim Henson’s Muppets but also a racially diverse human cast.
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Meanwhile, Henson’s friend Fred Rogers, the eponymous creator, host, head writer, lead musical composer and chief puppeteer of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, leaned on the expertise of child psychologists like his own mentor, Margaret McFarland, to help children navigate their feelings, relationships, self-image and curiosities.
The series, developed by Fred Rogers Productions, was among the first in kids programming to tackle difficult subjects like death, divorce and racial discrimination. In a historic 1969 episode directly addressing the nation’s tensions over segregated swimming pools, Rogers invited “Officer Clemmons,” a Black man, to soak his feet in a kiddie pool alongside the white host.
“Fred modeled inclusiveness,” says Paul Siefken, CEO and president of Fred Rogers Productions, which in the past decade has created new Rogers-inspired programming for PBS Kids and Amazon, including the animated Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, the puppet show Donkey Hodie and the live-action Odd Squad. “He didn’t make a big deal out of it. He just did it and knew that that was not only the right thing to do, but he wanted to reflect the world as it is.”
With that goal in mind, adds Siefken, Rogers “had advisers check his work to say, ‘Is this age-appropriate? Is this the right way to phrase something for young children for the point I’m trying to make?'”
“I think sometimes we don’t think about [Fred Rogers] as a pioneer of process,” Siefken continues. “He played a huge role in every episode, but he didn’t just trust his opinion or his background in education. I don’t know that anybody besides Sesame Workshop was doing that kind of approach.”
It’s a process Kay Wilson Stallings, chief production and creative development officer at Sesame Workshop, says the organization still takes through its in-house team of experts, who have child development backgrounds and can specialize in topics like math and science. “When Sesame Street first launched, it was really created to help children, particularly Black and brown children who were lower income, be ready for school,” she explains.
They also rely on external consultants, like those used for Apple TV+’s Ghostwriter, which used an expert familiar with Syrian refugees to ensured everything from the dialogue and food to the way a home looked was culturally accurate.
“Everything that we do, we do it with the intention of making sure that kids grow smarter, stronger and kinder,” Stallings says. “Smarter is those academic skills — the literacy, the numeracy, the critical thinking. Stronger is resiliency. Kinder is simply being kinder — to each other and to ourselves — and recognizing what it means to be a good person and contribute to your society, classroom, community and family.”
Another main value for both studios has been reflecting children’s communities. Ellen Doherty, CCO of Fred Rogers Productions, tells THR “it’s always about neighborhood. It’s about community. It’s about being aware of who the people are in your world — in a world.”
Now more than 50 years after their titular series first entered children’s homes, the media nonprofits behind two of TV’s longest-running and influential kids’ series are creatively navigating storytelling for a new industry era and generation of kids, with “so many more players making kids content right now, all grabbing for the same eyeballs,” Stallings says.
“If you want your work to be found, in today’s day and age, it is more difficult than it was when Fred was competing with three or four other networks,” Siefken adds. “The volume of content that’s being created right now is exponentially more.”
How they’re traversing that busy programming landscape, executives at both studios say, is not by radically shifting their company identities, with Stallings noting that Sesame’s “original mission has not changed, actually.” Instead, they continue to apply their tried and true values, often times through new avenues.
While Fred Rogers Productions specializes in entertainment for public broadcasting, many of its shows are also available on the free PBS Kids app as well as Amazon, with some seasons for free through Prime Video or a small monthly subscription that unlocks access to shows’ entire libraries. Fred Rogers Production’s online presence through PBS is especially notable in the kids space, with Siefken telling THR that it was Rogers who drove the classic show to work with the network to make Mister Rogers‘ Neighborhood their first website.
Sesame Workshop has a similar relationship to public broadcasting, alongside streaming partnerships tied to Apple TV+ and Max. “We always want to be able to have the opportunity for content to also be made available on PBS,” Stallings says. “Sesame Street is also on YouTube, and actually, a vast majority of our viewers watch it there.”
When it comes to the content itself, Fred Rogers Productions has focused in on “what does it mean to build on a legacy versus to leave a legacy,” according to Siefken, especially “when that person is no longer here.”
That’s meant they aren’t looking for the next Fred Rogers, but rather creative talents — creatives like Angela Santomero, Billy Aronson, Jennifer Oxley, Adam and David Rudman and Sonia Manzano — as dynamic as him. They have also introduced live action and animated series, the latter a medium of interest for Rogers and the basis for his show’s spiritual sequel Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood.
“Obviously, we learn a lot from what he made in Mister Rogers‘ Neighborhood and study that, but we think more about why he made it and how he made it. He had a real clear vision for making something of value for children, out of respect for their curiosity,” Siefken says. “The shows that we’ve created are all character driven, but feature those who are children themselves or are childlike. That was not something that was in Mister Rogers‘ Neighborhood.”
Instead, he says, the studio realized that they wanted to offer stories to their young, diverse audience that would help them find the character they identify with. “That’s not only in the age groups that we’re trying to serve, but it’s also in the style choices that we make,” Siefken continues. “Not everything is live action, not everything is animated.”
For Sesame, much of its core programming was built around puppetry. And while the network has interest in more lifestyle programming for kids and already moved into late night comedy with the co-viewing preschool series The Not-Too-Late Show with Elmo, puppetry remains unmatched in its dynamism for a global organization with a presence in 160 countries.
“These characters are our audience’s first best friends — they’re parasocial relationships — and when we get them out in the real world like we did with Helpsters with the wind blowing in their hair and the sunlight shining on them, there’s nothing more magical,” Stallings explains.
Still, she says, the studio is eager to remain “innovative” and responsive to the realities of “wherever kids and families are.” In some cases, that has meant leaning into animation, a medium that “travels more globally than live action and puppets,” Stallings notes. Workshop has also homed in on documentary, a space not historically thought about with kids content, first with social impact content around parental incarceration and the opioid crisis, and then in a longer-form with Through Our Eyes.
The show explores issues “families across the country are dealing with — climate displacement, parental incarceration, caring for a military caregiver and homelessness,” Stallings says of the four-episode first season, which features established and emerging filmmakers and is “told through a child’s lens.” Tackling more hard-hitting topics for older children’s audiences is also a part of the script series Ghostwriter, which the Sesame Workshop exec says incorporates storylines around topics like racism, “because kids are hearing about it, they’re seeing it, they’re experiencing it.”
“What happened after the murder of George Floyd is we realized it has to be more than just modeling because it’s not seeping through,” Stallings says. “The messaging that we’re thinking is happening, it’s not going to be through osmosis — just through the TV. You have to be explicit.”
It’s a choice that doesn’t defy Sesame’s origins, but doubles down on representing the experiences of its diverse and young viewership, like Fred Rogers Productions.
It’s also a renewed dedication to the same principles that saw the nonprofits reshape kids programming half a century ago: ensuring children are educated, emphasizing the importance navigating communities, and helping them understand their expanding sense of self.
“There was an interview that Fred did in our sizzle reel when I got to FRP seven years ago, and what he says is: “Imagine being given an hour of television every day. I wanted to make something of value. I did the best I could,” Doherty recalls. “We are being given people’s time and, in particular, the time of children — by the children themselves and by their parents. There is opportunity in that.”
A version of this story first appeared in the June 7 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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