text:
Talk:Centum and satem languages

Tocharian has no centum sound change, explain.
Dbachmann, how does Tocharian not have centum sound change? The palatals become velars. Also, it is likely that none of the centum languages form a node and the same with the satem languages. So, how is it that Albanian is not a satem language, when the term satem now just describes languages which have fricatives or affricates from the PIE palatals. There are no IE subgroups of Centum or Satem. Finally, I think you can keep the ad hominems to a minimum just because I didn't like your maps. Imperial78

Too technical
This article is a mine (¿-field?) of information, but is way too technical for the non-linguist reader to get much out of. Although I've spent many hours studying phonetics, the presentation of information here wearies me. Maybe that's because it dives right into depths of detail after the lead? Perhaps somebody with topic expertise could restructure the article to, first, deliver the main points, and only then, follow up with an exposition at a more detailed level. I'll be happy to help if anyone wants someone to review their suggestions for improvement. yoyo (talk) 15:48, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Map
While Florian's revert seems to not yet be in effect (the image still displays "Illyrian" as centum and "Palaeo-Balkanic" (?!) as "satem"), I'd like to note a few other issues with it as applies to the "Southern" zone. While the issues with calling Illyrian satem or centum in the lack of evidence have been noted, there are similar disputes for the other "Palaeo-Balkanic languages".

 * The map has Phrygian as satem. Ligorio and Lubotsky (2018) however...

 * Thracian too has now been questioned by Brixhe (2018): . I will note that Brixhe is likely a minority view however, given that he also thinks (same publication, in Klein-Joseph-Fritz 2018 Handbook).

 * Messapic is shown as centum on the map. However, this is is not something we can say with confidence. De Simone (2018, again in Fritz-Klein-Joseph) notes that we really just don't know much about the development of occlusives from PIE to Messapic.

Ideally all of these areas should be neither red nor blue. --Calthinus (talk) 18:12, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The fact is that languages like Illyrian, Messapic, Thracian or Phrygian are too scarcely attested to be confidently classified as either centum or satem. The so-called 'Paleo-Balkanic' languages–which is not a sub-family of languages but merely a geographical grouping (perhaps a Sprachbund) that sometimes even includes Ancient Greek–should be a grey zone on this map, and I don't understand why the editors of the map found the urge to add them. I'm even thinking about creating a new one, at least with a better visual quality. Azerty82 (talk) 18:58, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Another issue is that the map is synchronic and features languages or cultures separated by thousands of years (the Sintashta culture flourished ca. 2000 BCE, while Albanian is not attested before the 15th century CE). But it would take too much time to create an animated one. And Lusitanian is still on the map. We have like 5 shorts texts in Lusitanian. Azerty82 (talk) 19:12, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * PS: I'm not seeing Messapic/Thracian/Phrygian on the map any longer (Lusitanian is still there though). Try to refresh the cache of your browser. Azerty82 (talk) 19:17, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Albanian shouldn't be an issue. It isn't on the map I see (and shouldn't be, it is not about Albanian and Albanian is a complicated case). Though I don't think attestation should matter, i.e. we are not removing Baltic just because it wasn't attested until it was almost the Renaissance. --Calthinus (talk) 19:22, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Albanian is on the new version of the map, although it seems to be in a grey area. You're right to point out that the intent of the map is not to feature languages, but sub-families of languages (which existed before the first attestations). It got confusing with the recent additions. Azerty82 (talk) 19:37, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Imo the map should mention Celtic, Germanic, Italic (not colored in Apulia though!), Greek, and Tocharian for centum, and Hittite but not Luwian for centum. We should not have "Anatolic" when centumization is a factor that affected some Anatolic languages but not others! For satem, it should have Slavic, Baltic, Indic, and Iranian, and mayyyybe Armenian but I would lean toward omitting Armenian which is a particularly tenuous case. I don't see the point in OR mentions of anthropological cultures like Srubna etc. Mentions of Illyrian, "Palaeo-Balkanic", Dacian, Paeonian, Thracian, Phrygian, Messapic are not helpful as there is a lot of confusion about these. There is less confusion about Albanian, but Albanian is to be omitted for the same as Luwian because the map is about centum and satem languages not centum and satem languages and also the other Indo-European languages that are not really on either side.--Calthinus (talk) 19:52, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, I totally agree with you. Maybe we could depict Armerian with hatches (perhaps also Albanian and Luwian) as a satemized language. PS: I've noted that you're taking great care of the handbooks, that's good to see ;-) Azerty82 (talk) 19:57, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The distinction between "satem" and "satemized" is sophistry, IMHO. All that's "satem" ultimately really about is whether the dorsal rows for which there is no evidence of them ever having been labiovelar appear as two rather than one rows (secondary palatalisations excluded, which is what seems to have happened in Phrygian as well as in Italic). By that account, Armenian is simply satem, even if it may also show traces of a distinction between the traditionally reconstructed "pure velar" and labiovelar rows (the same is suspected for Albanian, and certain traces of labialisation have even been suggested for Balto-Slavic and perhaps Indo-Iranian, so Armenian is probably not even unique in this regard). Anatolian appears to be essentially centum, per Melchert, but I agree that the case is tricky enough that it's better to not mark it as either on the map, as is already done. I agree it's probably best to leave off poorly attested branches, so maybe we should revert to an even older version of the map.
 * As for the time period shown, it's true that some synthesis is present but also inevitable, and the best-fitting timeframe is somewhere in the late first millennium BC, around 500–200 BC, or perhaps a little later, when Latin loanwords started to enter Primitive Albanian, which still appears to have been before the turning of the eras; the Luwic branch of Anatolian was still not entirely extinct at the time, and Pisidian is directly attested in inscriptions from as late as the second century AD. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:01, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Florian -- for me, the time frame is not an issue. Regarding "satem" versus "satemized" (Armenian) or (per Demiraj 2018) "satem-like" (Albanian), imo it is the opinions of RS we should be adhering to.
 * In the Armenian case I am less personally knowledgeable and so I'm unsure (also afaik it's "satem-ness" is based on a mere three etyma which is imvho pretty bad given that it is surrounded by languages with well-known historical shifts between dorsal positions...). Side note with Armenian, the page says, without citation, that Armenian "could be" a centum language with secondary assibilation. This looks suspicious since the page goes on to demonstrate that Armenian has clearly different reflexes for the back and palatal velar serieses, meaning centumization did not occur. It would seem that instead the argument is that Armenian is in fact more like Luwian and Albanian, which are certainly not centum.
 * In the case of Albanian, at one point we had a consensus that referred to it as satem. But now Demiraj in Klein-Joseph-Fritz 2018 states it is definitively "not satem", and also not centum, although since palatovelars were also assibilated it is "satem-like". Instead, it's to be classed with Luwian, since the three dorsal positions have distinct reflexes. That is, if, as this page does, we define satem as the merger of *kw and *k (which Albanian does have specifically before back vowels as well as merging all three dorsal rows in some other conditions). If satem is instead to mean "assibilating/fronting the former palatal velars", then per my original research opinion it still makes sense to call it satem here. I will have to do a quick fix to the page as I have found Byrd (2018) referring to Albanian still as satem, albeit without discussing the matter (this is also the position of Orel, and the former position of Demiraj). However, this page is pretty clearly presenting the definition of satem as merging *kw and *k and fronting *ḱ, stating this in the lede: -- this then, would be the same criterion Demiraj is using, which would per his analysis not apply to Luwian and Albanian (and perhaps Armenian but again maybe the reality for Armenian is the data is just too feeble to tell). --Calthinus (talk) 23:56, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I do think the map should not refer to "satemized" languages, especially if it is unclear what that means. The use of "satemized" for Armenian just meant that it occurred during the development of the proto-language, but I am not sure what the usage in the map for Baltic and Slavic means (all satem languages are satemized per the mainstream view of three dorsal rows in PIE, no?). --Calthinus (talk) 23:58, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Personally, I think that "full merger of pure velar and labiovelar series" is a poor way to define satem as traces of this distinction have been claimed for all branches traditionally defined as satem. "No merger of the palatal and pure velar series, with assibilation of the palatal series" is a better definition. (There do not seem to be any IE branches/languages where the palatal and pure velar series are distinguished but the palatal series has not been assibilated, or for which this has even been proposed, so the condition is strictly speaking redundant, but it also doesn't hurt to include it.) Centum is more straightforward to define: IE languages are centum if the traditionally reconstructed "palatal" and "pure velar" series have identical reflexes and cannot be distinguished anywhere. (Interestingly, Kümmel has suggested – p. 27f. – that PIE may really have been centum, with the distinction in the satem branches having only emerged post-PIE, hence the qualifications.) For Anatolian, see Melchert 2015 (p. 15f.). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 12:12, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Hmm well the Kummel and Melchert (believe I read the Melchert some time back) are certainly interesting, perhaps could be of use to the page. In the 2018 source Azerty sent me (can send to you too if interested) there is much more discussion that could be of use to this page. My understanding is that a number of people including Hans Henrich Hock have argued that an innovative satemization spread from Indo-Iranian to other branches, though idk about the timeline for that. I'm not sure I agree with  as the best definition for satem, but in any case this would also exclude Albanian (there is a merger near /l n r/ of the pure and palatal velars) and some argue that Baltic and Slavic also feature this, though there are counterexamples (Pre Slavic k̑luHsa:te:i > *slu:xɛ:tεi > Russian slyshatj) and other interpretations -- Matasovic (2013) argues instead that these represent a case of "desatemization" in Slavic (see [https%3A%2F%2Fhrcak.srce.hr%2Ffile%2F172848&usg=AOvVaw3Xf9I4IWkWHfHipw4IWoQ-]) and appears to in another publication argue the same for Albanian, while Andersen instead thinks that these "desatemized" (per Matasovic) examples are actually some sort of centum substrate influence. But in the end I think we should be seeking out expert opinion on "what is the most salient aspect of the centum/satem division" and if (probably) there is disagreement among experts, we should say as much.
 * Side note for anyone who might appreciate my nerdy rumination -- this work on the nature of the satem shift in Armenian could be of use |lang_fr&id=f-dFAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA299&dq=Albanian+satem&ots=ZU1v8LoZW8&sig=xG_Sxlg0Uhj5uzcgwNlwx3Jbnlw#v=onepage&q=Armenian%20satem&f=false. --Calthinus (talk) 18:21, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * A depalatalisation of this kind, limited to certain contexts, is also present in Indo-Iranian (namely before liquids), known as Weise's law. However, there is by no means a full merger, as in centum languages. Please read my suggested definitions closely. To claim that "no merger" has occurred in Albanian, Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian would be ridiculous. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:25, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Okay that's fair. The goal is not to "break" the satem-centum dichotomy with edge cases: if "no complete merger of the palatal and pure velar series, with assibilation of the palatal series" is the best definition and supported by sources, the page should be fixed to at least mention this. Regarding the map, what is your proposal? Azerty and I appear to be in agreement that the (broadly, incl Messapic) Balkan languages (modern and ancient) should not be colored or even marked. Do you disagree with this?--Calthinus (talk) 18:36, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The fact is that satem languages are more easily defined because they seem to constitute a distinct sub-group within the I-E languages, including at best the Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian branches, while centum languages exhibit features that are likely to have emerged independently (but even in this situation, Baltic and Slavic languages had already begun to diverge when the distinct satem features appeared, so we are are not talking about an inherited feature that would make a Balto-Slavo-Indo-Iranian branch viable). On the other side, the centum mergers seem to have happened independently in the languages, since they appear in idioms that weren't in contact between each other (Hititte–not proto-Anatolian–and Tocharian, for instance) and is clearly not an inherited sound change. That is why the chronology of the map is important to me, and that is why I think it is decisive to distinguish between 'purely satem languages' (i.e. Indo-Iranian & Balto-Slavic), and 'satemized languages' (i.e. Luwian & Armenian) . Azerty82 (talk) 19:07, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I have more questions at this point. What is the goal of this map? Is it simply to indicate to a reader where satem languages and centum languages are located? Or is it to present Von Bradke's view on how it spread? Or is it to present the modern view of how the dichotomy emerged? I think we need to clarify these things.--Calthinus (talk) 19:16, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * As I said above, I agree that it's best to leave poorly documented languages/branches off the map, i. e. to neither name nor colour them. The point of the map, as I understand it, is to give a rough overview of the geographic distribution of satem and centum languages. A secondary point, von Bradke's hypothesis, Dbachmann decided to represent on the map as well, which I personally don't mind, but it could be omitted.
 * Although Anatolian is documented fairly well overall, I'm also fine with leaving it outside of the centum/satem dichotomy for the purposes of the map, given that its case appears to be more complicated and controversial, and Anatolian was already almost on the brink of extinction by the turning of the eras, anyway.
 * Personally, I think that Dbachmann's original version was the best one, and most of the edits to the map have been detrimental, with only two changes being clear improvements: 1) colouring Tocharian blue; 2) changing the distribution of IE in the Iberian Peninsula.
 * If PIE was centum, the problems mentioned by Azerty82 are solved: the satem group is innovative. Even under the conventional three-dorsal-series reconstruction of PIE, the independent centum mergers would be trivial enough if the palatal series consisted of palatal or even palatalised velar stops, or if it was velar while the "pure velar" series was uvular. Also, contra Azerty82, Balto-Slavic is now generally considered to be a coherent branch that did not diverge before the second or first millennium BC, with Proto-Balto-Slavic already reconstructed as satem, despite depalatalisation (or lack of palatalisation) in certain contexts (with loanwords from centum branches, predominantly Germanic, generally only later having intruded especially into Slavic). Azerty82's proposed distinction between "satem" and "satemized" IE is too subtle and too far from consensus for the general reader, I feel (we should be cautious and careful not to propagate our pet hypotheses to laypeople here), although it could be mentioned in the body of the article if it is supported by sources. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:28, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * We could build off the current version Florian reverted to by removing Lusitanian and  Messapic from centum -- and if we're at it let's remove the territory of Livonians and Volga Finns who were not Balticized/Slavicized until quite recently. The Dacian territory marked "Iranian" can also be fixed. Albanian and Anatolic, I"m equally amenable the current version that has them as gray/white or just omitting them. We could also remove Srubna/Sintashta, and use a separate map that just marks where those cultures were located for the section about Von Bradke's views. This way we are not propagating any hypothesis, I think -- including not propagating Bradke 1890. --Calthinus (talk) 19:39, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Let me clarify my original wording: "Baltic and Slavic languages had already begun to diverge internally when the satem features emerged". I'm not saying that they already formed distinct and unified proto-languages, but that they were clearly dialectalized (or near-dialectalized) by the time satem features spread from linguistic contacts with Indo-Iranians. This is evidenced by the fact that the mergers of labiovelar and velar stops happened distinctively within the 'proto-dialects', and were inherited in distinctive manners in the attested languages. The proposed satem vs satemization distinction rests upon the fact that such features happened independently (and in a limited manner)–in the case of Albanian–or perhaps from later contacts–in the case of Armenian. This is not my "pet (did you mean personal?) hypothesis" but a serious proposition supported (although not universally) by scholars. 19:48, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * (Sorry for the length of the quote) . Ringe (2018): The old division between centum languages (those that merged the palatal and velar stops, but not the labiovelars) and satem languages (those that merged the labiovelar and velar stops, but not the palatals) has had to be drastically revised. Melchert (1987) showed that the Luvian subgroup of Anatolian preserved PIE *k, *k, and *kw as separate phonemes. Since mergers are irreversible, it follows that Proto-Anatolian likewise pre- served this three-way contrast. Hittite, however, exhibits the centum merger − and it is impossible that that innovation is historically shared with any of the other centum lan- guages, because Proto-Anatolian had already undergone so many innovations (cf. Melch- ert 1994: 60−91; Garrett 1990: 265−280) that it must have been mutually unintelligible with the other IE languages even if they were still in contact (which is itself doubtful). In other words, the centum merger is a repeatable innovation; and it follows that the centum languages cannot be shown to be a subgroup and need not have been geographi- cally contiguous in the immediate post-PIE period. The satem merger should also have been repeatable; moreover, it appears that not all the languages that have sometimes been said to share the merger actually do. Though the Albanian evidence is difficult to evaluate, it appears that Albanian, like the Luvian group, did not at first merge any of the PIE dorsals (cf. Demiraj 1997: 63−65); that Armenian underwent the merger is unlikely at best, since it appears that some of the PIE labiovelars are palatalized in environments in which the velars are not (cf. e.g. Schmitt 1981: 62−65; Olsen 1999: 805−808 with references) and it is even possible that *kw became *p before *o prior to the Armenian stop shift (Olsen 1999: 805−808). That leaves Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic as probable members of a satem group. It appears that those two subgroups share not only the satem merger but also the “RUKI-rule”, a sound change which retracted *s after high vocalics, rhotics, and dorsals (Andersen 1968); that tends to strengthen the case that they constitute a clade. On the other hand, the recent discovery of Gaulish future stems in *-syé/ó- (McCone 1991: 145 with refer- ences) has removed one item from the potential list of satem-language innovations. But the fact that Baltic and Slavic (often separately) exhibit some forms with the centum development of dorsals which are unlikely to be loans from (pre-)Proto-Germanic (cf. already Porzig 1954: 74−75) strongly suggests that the satem merger, at least, spread from Indo-Iranian to Balto-Slavic after the latter had already begun to diversify internally (so e.g. Hock 1991: 442−444). If that is true, then the satem group can be a subgroup in the sense that it remained a dialect continuum after losing contact with the other IE languages, but not in the strictest sense of the term. The fact that the centum merger does not define a subgroup is important for assessing the position of Tocharian, which exhibits that merger (Ringe 1991b: 138−144, 1996: 39− 42). Partly for that reason, some scholars had suggested that in spite of its historical position at the far eastern end of the IE Sprachraum Tocharian was at first a western dialect of IE. Ringe (1991a) examined the available evidence and concluded that Tocharian shares no significant innovations with any other subgroup of the family. (On more recent assessments see further below.) Azerty82 (talk) 19:53, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The second İranian label with the strange dot over the capital I should definitely be removed (along with the second Celtic label and the Lusitanian one), and I consider it to be one of the non-improvements to the map (the intention was apparently to mark Scythian, but that's an unnecessary detail). Can we colour Albanian light red at least? That said, it sort of already is.
 * Azerty82, Proto-Balto-Slavic is generally reconstructed as a completely unified proto-dialect, without any internal dialectalisation. Otherwise, it would not be Proto-Balto-Slavic, and Balto-Slavic would not be a coherent branch. The hypothesis you mention is definitely not consensus, it's only Ringe's proposal, and absolutely a pet hypothesis that is completely irrelevant for the purposes of the introduction and the map. I think Ringe is referring to doublets such as Lithuanian akmuõ vs. ašmuõ, as well as klausýti, for which other explanations have been proposed (with "Proto-Balto-Slavic was centum" definitely not being the best explanation, IMHO). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:59, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, you and I know well that proto-languages are reconstructed dialect-free because they are reconstructed proto-languages. But let's focus on the map.
 * Why do we need to draw precise borders on the map. Let's just place the names of I-E branches coloured with blue (centum) or red (satem). Azerty82 (talk) 20:08, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with this^. It would be good to put an end once and for all to borders that are anachronistic or just wrong (i.e. the Volga). Regarding Albania and Luwian (or per Melchert "Luvo-Lycian" ), and Armenian, what I gather from the current sources presented is this: both are "special cases", in which distinct reflexes for three rows existed, and assibilation occurred, with reflexes of *ḱ in Proto-Albanian *ts > Albanian th and ts, s in Luvo-Lycian. There are different interpretations among experts for this. Ringe 2018 and Demiraj 2018 (the leading Alb specialist) argue this means Albanian and Luwian exist side by side in their own special group that lies outside the centum-satem dichotomy despite a resemblance to satem in having dental fricative reflexes for the palatal velar series. Meanwhile Melchert 2015 in the above link Florian originally provided has his own view that, and in fact did have a merger of front and back velars but this happened only after the front velars split. What is the NPOV way to draw a map? We should go with the largest common denominator between these two views expressed by leading experts. What is this? Albanian and Luwian are both distinguished by having distinct reflexes for the three rows, and having at least some degree of regular assibiliation that targeted specifically the palatal velars. How does Armenian fit in here, I don't know, we should again consult the experts and not get into lengthy debates about our own views -- but if we agree on this point on Luwian/Albanian, it is progress on the matter. I also think this is a good compromise, we can color the names of the included languages (Luwian, Albanian, maybe Armenian) a shade of lavender  -- this is a concession to Azerty's wish to distinguish "satemized" languages, while at the same time a concession to Florian's desire to note the shared behavior between Albanian and the undisputed satem languages. Do we agree? --Calthinus (talk) 21:56, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

P.I.E. *ḱ ---> Baltic *s
s? Shouldn't it be ś? Muonium777 (talk) 08:48, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

k vs k' minimal pairs?
In the reconstructed vocabulary, do we have anything by way of minimal pairs contrasting k & k' ? --B.Bryant (talk) 09:39, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Centum and satem languages


text:
Constant Nieuwenhuys

Constant Anton Nieuwenhuys (21 July 1920 – 1 August 2005), better known as Constant, was a Dutch painter, sculptor, graphic artist, author and musician.

Early period
Constant was born in Amsterdam on 21 July 1920 as the first son of Pieter Nieuwenhuijs and Maria Cornelissen. Their second son, Jan Nieuwenhuys, was born a year later. Both sons became artists although their parents had no apparent interest in art.

As a young child Constant drew passionately and showed great talent. He read literature with a special preference for poetry and played musical instruments. During his teenage years he learned to sing and to read music while in the church choir at the Ignatius Gymnasium, a prestigious Jesuit school in Amsterdam. In his later years, greatly inspired by gypsy music, he only played improvised music. He played guitar, violin and at 45 years of age also mastered playing the cimbalon.

Constant painted his first oil painting, De Emmaüsgangers, at age sixteen. It depicted the revelation of Jesus to two of his followers in Emmaus. With no money to buy materials he painted this painting on a jute sugar bag with pigments he had bought from a house painter. Many of Constant's early drawings and paintings are religiously inspired, due to his Jesuit schooling. Yet at the age of twenty Constant turned his back on Catholicism.

After one year studying at the Kunstnijverheidsschool (Arts and Crafts School), Constant attended the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunst (State Academy of Fine Arts) from 1939 to 1941. This education in craftmanship was put to use especially during his "New Babylon" period, when Constant built many constructions and models.

Constant lived and worked in Bergen from 1941 to 1943. Through the Bergense School he was introduced to the work of Paul Cézanne, which impacted him deeply, as evident in Zelfportret (Self Portrait), 1942. On 13 July 1942 he married Matie van Domselaer, the daughter of the composer Jakob van Domselaer.

The city of Bergen was evacuated by the Germans in 1943 and so Constant and Matie moved back to Amsterdam. During this period Constant went into hiding and refrained from registering at the Kulturkammer (Nazi Chamber of Culture) to avoid the Arbeitseinsatz (labour supply for the Germans). Because of this he was unable to conventionally exercise his craft or to buy art supplies. To paint Constant used tablecloths and bed linen and had to rinse them out to start again.

During the war Constant's brother in law, Jaap van Domselaer, moved into the apartment to hide from the 'Arbeitseinsatz.' He introduced Constant to Plato, Spinoza, Descartes, Kant, Hegel and Marx. Especially the latter provided great inspiration to Constant regarding his later ideas on art and society.

During the winter famine of 1944 Constant's first son, Victor Nieuwenhuys, was born. After the war, Constant, his wife and son moved back to Bergen only to return to Amsterdam in 1946 where they lived in an apartment across from the zoo Artis. When the war ended Constant was able to expand and grow as an artist after years of captivity and limitations. He liberated himself artistically and experimented with multiple techniques of art-making. He was inspired by Cubism, especially by Georges Braque. In 1946 his daughter Martha was born, followed by his daughter Olga in 1948.

CoBrA
In 1946 Constant travelled to Paris for the first time where he met the young Danish painter Asger Jorn. The friendship between Jorn and Constant later formed the basis for the avant-garde movement CoBrA.

July 1948 Constant founded Reflex  with Corneille, Karel Appel and his brother Jan Nieuwenhuys. The first edition of the magazine Reflex was published with a manifesto written by Constant. For Constant art had to be experimental. He had deducted this from the French word 'expérience' and believed that art springs from experience of the artist and is continuously changing. In the manifesto he stated that the process of creation is more important to the experimental artist than the work itself; it is a means to reach spiritual and mental enrichment. Also, the work of experimental artists is a mirror image of changes in the general perception of beauty.

Constant, Corneille and Appel, three totally different characters and artists, were united in their quest for innovation. They exhibited their work together and were often seen together in the European art scene. The wanderlust of the three is especially notorious.

Later in the year 1948 on the terrace of café Notre Dame in Paris the Experimentele Groep in Holland linked up with Christian Dotremont and Joseph Noiret from Belgium and Asger Jorn from Denmark to form CoBrA, a name which was made by Dotremont, formed by the first letters of their hometowns: Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam. The members opposed aesthetics in painting and bourgeois art in general.

Constant had already outlined their ideas in his manifesto in Reflex magazine. This manifesto contains another of his famous quotes: "A painting is not a structure of colours and lines, but an animal, a night, a cry, a man, or all of these together".

Constant was productive during the CoBrA period. White Bird (1948), Ladder (1949) and Scorched Earth I (1951) are some of his noted works from this period. At this time CoBrA published bulletin additional artists from several different disciplines joined their ranks. In 1948 Constant, together with poet Gerrit Kouwenaar, published a poetry album Goede Morgen Haan. Additionally there were two large CoBrA exhibitions, one in Amsterdam in 1949 and one in Liège in 1951.

The director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (Municipal Museum of Amsterdam), Willem Sandberg, was very supportive of young artists and fully supported the CoBrA group by giving them seven large rooms to exhibit their work in. Most of the CoBrA works had been fairly small due to their lack of money and so Sandberg gave the artists an advance to create some larger works in the week before the exhibition. Constant, Corneille, Appel and Eugène Brands created several large pieces of art that have become iconic for the movement. The architect Aldo van Eyck was commissioned to shape the exhibition. The works of art as well as the way they were presented give rise to harsh critique from press and public. A critic from Het Vrije Volk wrote: "Geklad, geklets en geklodder in het Stedelijk Museum" ("Smirch, twaddle and mess in the Municipal Museum"). The CoBrA artists were considered scribblers and con artists.

In the Liège exhibition in 1951, even larger than the Stedelijk exhibition, the CoBrA group dissolved itself and with its tenth edition bulletin publication. As Christian Dotremont, the international secretary, stated in Museum News in 1962 the group would rather "mourir en beauté" (die in beauty) than become a regular artist interest group.

Situationist International
After CoBrA Constant's work became more abstract. Back in Amsterdam in the summer of 1952 he developed an interest in spatial architecture and three-dimensional works. With Aldo van Eyck, whom he met during his CoBrA time, he created a space for the exhibition 'Man and House' at the Urban Museum Amsterdam from 1952-1953. In 1954 he worked on a project with Gerrit Rietveld. Together they created a model house for warehouses de Bijenkorf.

In 1952 Constant received a scholarship from the Arts Council of Great Britain to study in London for three months. There he met, amongst others, Henry Moore, Anthony Hill, Kenneth Martin, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Roger Hilton and Victor Pasmore. He found the art climate in London very welcoming. As opposed to Paris, Constant felt that art was judged more objectively.

At that time Constant lived near Kensington Gardens and as he walked through the bombed city every day he started to wonder how people live and how cities should be built. His stay in London raised his awareness of how the constructions that surround us influence us. He felt that the constructions of his time were mostly practical, immensely dull and provided no room to develop playful and creative lifestyles.

In the summer of 1956 Asger Jorn invited Constant to Alba, Piedmont, Italy, for a congress dedicated to 'Industry and the Fine Arts' initiated by 'Mouvement pour un Bauhaus Imaginiste' (International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus). At this congress Constant presented his lecture Demain la poésie logera la vie in which he pleaded for a free architecture which could stimulate a creative lifestyle rather than impede it. In 1952 Debord had founded the Lettrist International for which he was a writer, filmmaker and strategic activist. The 'Lettrist International' were also at the Alba congress and they pleaded for a unitary urbanism (the synthesis of art and technology). Later that year Constant visited Debord in Alba, which proved to be an inspiration for both.

Debord wanted to establish an even more radical movement which would totally abandon the arena of fine art while solely focusing on questions of psychogeography, a total dissolution of boundaries between art and life. In 1957 he and Asger Jorn brought together the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus and the Lettrist International by establishing Situationist International. They specifically denied their status as an art movement.

Constant did not join SI at that time. He objected to the SI on the ground that the movement seemed to be established mainly by artists who have their own interest at heart more than a common goal. When SI openly pleaded for 'unitary urbanism', as defined by Constant and Debord, Constant joined. An intensive correspondence between him and Debord followed. Constant wrote several theoretical articles for the French SI journal and staged events at several museums in Paris as well as the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, where he showed his New Babylon series in 1959.

The success of the New Babylon show in 1959 prompted SI to plan a group exhibition there in April–May 1960. This exhibition would never take place. Disagreements in the group resulted in a split and several expulsions. In 1960 Constant left the group for the same reason he initially objected to joining. By 1961 no one remained of the original artistic core or tendency except Debord himself. though members more allied to the SI's political tendency remained.

New Babylon
Back in Amsterdam after his stay in London, Nieuwenhuys started to focus mainly on architecture and the urban environment. The focal point of his work was finding out what potential added value art can provide in intensifying daily life, in which there is room for creative expression. He abandoned painting to work solely on his New Babylon project from 1956 to 1974.

With New Babylon Nieuwenhuys envisioned a "world wide city for the future" where land is owned collectively, work is fully automated and the need to work replaced with a nomadic life of creative play. New Babylon is inhabited by homo ludens, who, freed from labor, will not have to make art, for he can be creative in the daily practice of his life.

In Nieuwenhuys' own words: "The project of New Babylon only intends to give the minimum conditions for a behaviour that must remain as free as possible. Any restriction of the freedom of movement, any limitation with regard to the creation of mood and atmosphere, has to be avoided. Everything has to remain possible, all is to happen, the environment has to be created by the activity of life, and not inversely."

The New Babylon project consisted of a series of models, constructions, maquettes, collages, drawings, graphics and texts expressing Constant's theories of urban development and social interaction. A few examples of spatial constructions for which he used modern materials like stainless steel, aluminum and perspex are Het Ruimtecircus (1956) (Spatial Circus) and Het Zonneschip (1956) (Sunvessel).

In 1974 the New Babylon project officially came to an end with a large exhibition in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. Because he lacked room to store the vast collection of constructions, maquettes, maps and structures he sold them all to the museum. In 1999 Constant's New Babylon: City for Another Life, opened at the Drawing Center in New York. It was his first solo exhibition in the United States and was curated by Mark Wigley. There was a symposium conducted in conjunction with the exhibition.

According to the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, Nieuwenhuys has made a lot of architects think with his New Babylon: "He was an example of courage".

Colorism
Constant returned to painting, watercoloring and graphics in 1969. Until the mid-1970s, the subjects of his imaginary world New Babylon still crowded his work. However, more and more, he was inspired by contemporary and political issues, including such things as the Vietnam War, African famine and Kosovo refugees. Marxism was a strong influence. Rudi Fuchs said in his foreword to the Catalogue of Constant Paintings in 1995: "there are people who consider Constant's later work as a return to tradition. I, however, do not share this opinion. Because I consider his later development from the 1970s as greater penetration into the garden of painting."

In the tradition of the Venetian Renaissance painters, Titian and Tintoretto, Constant applied himself to the technique of colorism. Following this technique the artist doesn't make use of charcoal or pencil sketches but applies colour directly on the canvas with the paintbrush, constructing soft transitions instead of sharp contours. The most important feature of this technique is the way light is expressed in the painting by integrating it into the colour. This technique is laborious. The painting comes to life layer by layer. Constant painted with oil on canvas and every layer he applied then needed to dry. In this period Constant produced a mere three to four paintings per year.

Public space

In 1949 Constant decorated a garden wall in Tibirkelunde, Sjelland, Denmark.

In 1963 The Gate of Constant was placed at the entry of a sports park in the west side of Amsterdam. Constant designed the forty-foot-high concrete structure as a commission for the Municipality of Amsterdam. For almost three decades the structure adorned the entry in anonymity until Rita Doets, a former employee of the municipality, left money in her legacy to construct an information sign next to the gate. Constant's widow, Trudy Nieuwenhuijs, was present at the inauguration.

In 1966 Constant designed a fountain for the Kooiplein in Leiden. For years the structure didn't function and slowly withered. When the square was redesigned in 1999, the fountain was repaired. New equipment made sure that the shoppers were not bothered by the water.

Death
Constant died on 1 August 2005 and was survived by his son and his three daughters, and by his widow and her daughter.

Films
Gyromorphosis (1958), 7 min - In Gyromorphosis, film maker Hy Hirsh strives to display the kinetic qualities of the New Babylon structures of Constant Nieuwenhuys. One by one he puts parts of the structures in motion and films the details with colored lighting having them overlap each other, appear and disappear. He creates a sensation of acceleration and suspense suggested by the work itself.

Accompanying Simon Vinkenoog to Constant's New Babylon (1962), 15 min - Lies Westenburg visits Constant at his studio with writer Simon Vinkenoog. Simon Vinkenoog and Constant discuss the ideas behind the New Babylon project.

Constant oder der Weg nach New Babylon (1968), 55 min - For ten years Constant worked on his New Babylon project as a reaction to the architectural and social reality. Film maker Carlheinz Caspari follows Constant and his visions.

Cobra, a revolt against order (1986), 50 min - Documentary by Jan Vrijman about the meaning and influence of the COBRA group, then and now.

Constant, Avant le Départ (2005), 82 min - Constant died in the summer of 2005. Thomas Doebele and Maarten Schmidt filmed the artist during the last months of his life. They followed him and his dog, Tikus, on their daily stroll to the artist's studio, where he finished his last painting Le Piège.

New Babylon de Constant (2005), 13 min - New Babylon visually captured by Constant's son Victor Nieuwenhuijs and Maartje Seyfert.

Exhibitions
This is an incomplete list of Constant's exhibitions over the years:
 * 1940 at the Aalderink art gallery in Amsterdam (together with Hans Wiesman, first exhibition for Constant)
 * 1947 Santee Landweer art gallery in Amsterdam (first solo exhibition for Constant)
 * 1953 For a spatial colorisme in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam Constant with Aldo van Eijck
 * 1956 XXVIII Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d'Arte, Venice
 * 1959 II. Documenta, Kassel
 * 1959 Constant. Constructions and models Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
 * 1961 ''Niw (sic!) Babylon in the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam
 * 1964 4. Documenta, Kassel
 * 1964 Académie Royale, Kopenhagen
 * 1964–1965  '45-'85 Gemeentemuseum Den Haag
 * 1966 New Babylon at the Biennale of Venice (Constant represented the Netherlands)
 * 1967 New Babylon in Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo
 * 1974 New Babylon, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag
 * 1974–1975 Constant. An illustration of freedom [drawings 1945-74], Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
 * 1978 Constant. Paintings 1969-77, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
 * 1980 Constant. Paintings 1940-1980, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag
 * 1985 Work from the period 1975-1985, Centraal Museum in Utrecht
 * 1985 Arbeiten auf Papier 1948-1985, in Kultur-historischen Museum der Stadt Bielefeldt
 * 1986 Constant 1945-1983, Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn
 * 1993 Constant. Drawings, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag
 * 1994 Constant. Models / Constructions, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag
 * 1994–1995 Constant. Œuvreprijs 1994, Chabot Museum, Rotterdam
 * 1996 Constant: paintings 1948-1995, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam & Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum Ålborg
 * 1997 Situacionistes. Art, politica, urbanisme, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)
 * 1998 Constant, etchings and lithographs, Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, Venezuela
 * 1998–1999 Constant - New Babylon, Witte de With (Centrum voor hedendaagse kunst), Rotterdam
 * 1999 Another City for Another Life: Constant's New Babylon, The Drawing Center, New York
 * 2001 Constant, une rétrospective, Musée Picasso Antibes
 * 2002 Constant. New Babylon, Documenta 11, Platform 5, Kassel Hauptbahnhof
 * 2004 Constant graphic, Cobra Museum
 * 2005–2006 Tribute to Constant, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag
 * 2006 Play! The art of play, Cobra Museum
 * 2008–2009 Constant. In his studio, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam
 * 2009 Time as Matter. MACBA collection. New Acquisitions, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona
 * 2009 Intensely Dutch, Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia
 * 2011 Klee und Cobra. Ein Kinderspiel, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland
 * 2012 Klee and Cobra. A Child's Play, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek and Cobra Museum

Public collections
Constant's artworks can be found in the following public collections.

Dutch museums

 * Amsterdam Museum (formerly known as Amsterdam's Historical Museum)
 * Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht
 * Centraal Museum, Utrecht
 * Cobra Museum for modern art, Amstelveen
 * Gemeentemuseum Den Haag
 * Groninger museum
 * Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo
 * Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam
 * Rijksmuseum – Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam
 * Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede
 * Stadsgalerij Heerlen
 * Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
 * Stedelijk Museum Schiedam
 * Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven

European museums

 * Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée National dʼart moderne, Paris, France
 * FRAC - le fonds régional dʼart contemporain et architecture de recherche - Orléans, France
 * Krefelder Kunstmusea, Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld, Germany
 * Kunstmuseum Bochum, Bochum, Germany
 * Kunsthalle in Emden, Germany
 * Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg/Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum, Denmark
 * Lehmbruck-Museum, Duisburg, Germany
 * MACBA, Spain
 * Museum Jorn, Silkeborg, Denmark
 * Staatliche Museen, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany
 * Tate Gallery, London
 * Tate Modern, London

Museums outside Europe
 * MoAFL, Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, US
 * SFMOMA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, US

Awards
This is a list of awards granted to Constant.
 * 1960 Sikkens Award (together with Aldo van Eyck)
 * 1966 Premio Cardazzo at the Venice Biennale
 * 1971 Royal decoration of 'Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau' (refused)
 * 1974 David Röell Award for his work as a draughtsman
 * 1985 Singer Award for his entire body of work
 * 1991 Resistance Award of the Foundation Artist Resistance 1942-1945
 * 1994 Oeuvre Award from Foundation Fund for Fine Arts, Design & Engineering

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History of Sesame Street

The preschool educational television program Sesame Street was first aired on public television stations on November 10, 1969, and reached its 54th season in 2023. The history of Sesame Street has reflected changing attitudes to developmental psychology, early childhood education, and cultural diversity. Featuring Jim Henson's Muppets, animation, live shorts, humor and celebrity appearances, it was the first television program of its kind to base its content and production values on laboratory and formative research, and the first to include a curriculum "detailed or stated in terms of measurable outcomes". Initial responses to the show included adulatory reviews, some controversy and high ratings. By its 40th anniversary in 2009, Sesame Street was broadcast in over 120 countries, and 20 independent international versions had been produced. It has won eleven Grammys and over 150 Emmys in its history—more than any other children's show.

The show was conceived in 1966 during discussions between television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and Carnegie Corporation vice president Lloyd Morrisett. Their goal was to create a children's television show that would "master the addictive qualities of television and do something good with them", such as helping young children prepare for school. After two years of research, the newly formed Children's Television Workshop (CTW) received a combined grant of $8 million from the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation and the U.S. federal government to create and produce a new children's television show.

By the show's tenth anniversary in 1979, nine million American children under the age of six were watching Sesame Street daily, and several studies showed it was having a positive educational impact. The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. In 1981, the federal government withdrew its funding, so the CTW turned to other sources, such as its magazine division, book royalties, product licensing and foreign income. During the 1980s, Sesame Street's curriculum expanded to include topics such as relationships, ethics and emotions. Many of the show's storylines were taken from the experiences of its writing staff, cast and crew, most notably the death of Will Lee—who played Mr. Hooper—and the marriage of Luis and Maria.

In recent decades, Sesame Street has faced societal and economic challenges, including changes in the viewing habits of young children, more competition from other shows, the development of cable television and a drop in ratings. After the turn of the 21st century, the show made major structural adaptations, including changing its traditional magazine format to a narrative format. Because of the popularity of the Muppet Elmo, the show incorporated a popular segment known as "Elmo's World". In late 2015, in response to "sweeping changes in the media business", HBO began airing first-run episodes of Sesame Street. Episodes became available on PBS stations and websites nine months after they aired on HBO. As of its 50th anniversary in 2019, Sesame Street has produced over 4,500 episodes, 35 TV specials, 200 home videos, and 180 albums. Its YouTube channel had almost 5 million subscribers, and the show had 24 million followers on social media.

Background
In the late 1960s, 97% of all American households owned a television set, and preschool children watched an average of 27 hours of television per week; programs created for them were widely criticized for being too violent and for reflecting commercial values. Producer Joan Ganz Cooney called children's programming a "wasteland", and she was not alone in her criticism. Many children's television programs were produced by local stations, with little regard for educational goals, or cultural diversity. As writer David Borgenicht stated, the use of children's programming as an educational tool was "unproven" and "a revolutionary concept".

According to children's media experts Edward Palmer and Shalom M. Fisch, children's television programs of the 1950s and 1960s duplicated "prior media forms". For example, they tended to show simple shots of a camera's-eye view of a location filled with children, or they recreated storybooks with shots of book covers and motionless illustrated pages. The hosts of these programs were "insufferably condescending", though one exception was Captain Kangaroo, created and hosted by Bob Keeshan, which author Michael Davis described as having a "slower pace and idealism" that most other children's shows lacked.

Early childhood educational research had shown that when children were prepared to succeed in school, they earned higher grades and learned more effectively. Children from low-income families had fewer resources than children from higher-income families to prepare them for school. Research had shown that children from low-income, minority backgrounds tested "substantially lower" than middle-class children in school-related skills, and that they continued to have educational deficits throughout school. The field of developmental psychology had grown during this period, and scientists were beginning to understand that changes in early childhood education could increase children's cognitive growth. Because of these trends in education, along with the great societal changes occurring in the United States during this era, the time was ripe for the creation of a show like Sesame Street.

Beginnings
Since 1962, Cooney had been producing talk shows and documentaries at educational television station WNDT, and in 1966 had won an Emmy for a documentary about poverty in America. In early 1966, Cooney and her husband Tim hosted a dinner party at their apartment in New York; experimental psychologist Lloyd Morrisett, who has been called Sesame Street's "financial godfather", and his wife Mary were among the guests. Cooney's boss, Lewis Freedman, whom Cooney called "the grandfather of Sesame Street", also attended the party, as did their colleague Anne Bower. As a vice-president at the Carnegie Corporation, Morrisett had awarded several million dollars in grants to organizations that educated poor and minority preschool children. Morrisett and the other guests felt that even with limited resources, television could be an effective way to reach millions of children.

A few days after the dinner party, Cooney, Freedman, and Morrisett met at the Carnegie Corporation's offices to make plans; they wanted to harness the addictive power of television for their own purposes, but did not yet know how. The following summer, Morrisett hired her to conduct research on childhood development, education and media, and she visited experts in these fields across the United States and Canada. She researched their ideas about the viewing habits of young children and wrote a report on her findings.

Cooney's study, titled "The Potential Uses of Television for Preschool Education", spelled out how television could be used to help young children, especially from low-income families, prepare for school. The focus on the new show was on children from disadvantaged backgrounds, but Cooney and the show's creators recognized that in order to achieve the kind of success they wanted, it had to be equally accessible to children of all socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds. At the same time, they wanted to make the show so appealing to inner-city children that it would help them learn as much as children with more educational opportunities.

Cooney proposed that public television, even though it had a poor track record in attracting inner-city audiences, could be used to improve the quality of children's programming. She suggested using the television medium's "most engaging traits", including high production values, sophisticated writing, and quality film and animation, to reach the largest audience possible. In the words of critic Peter Hellman, "If [children] could recite Budweiser jingles from TV, why not give them a program that would teach the ABCs and simple number concepts?" Cooney wanted to create a program that would spread values favoring education to nonviewers—including their parents and older siblings, who tended to control the television set. To this end, she suggested that humor directed toward adults be included, which, as Lesser reported, "may turn out to be a pretty good system in forcing the young child to stretch to understand programs designed for older audiences". By 2019, 80% of parents watched Sesame Street with their children.

Development
As a result of Cooney's proposal, the Carnegie Corporation awarded her a $1 million grant in 1968 to establish the Children's Television Workshop (CTW) to provide support to the creative staff of the new show. Morrisett, who was responsible for fundraising, procured additional grants from the United States federal government, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Ford Foundation for the CTW's initial budget, which totaled $8 million; obtaining funding from this combination of government agencies and private foundations protected the CTW from economic pressures experienced by commercial networks. Sesame Street was an expensive program to produce because the creators decided they needed to compete with other programs that invested in professional, high quality production.

The producers spent eighteen months preparing the new show, something unprecedented in children's television. The show had a budget of $28,000 per episode. After being named executive director of the CTW, Cooney began to assemble a team of producers: Jon Stone was responsible for writing, casting, and format; David Connell took over animation and volume; and Samuel Gibbon served as the show's chief liaison between the production staff and the research team. Stone, Connell, and Gibbon had worked on Captain Kangaroo together, but were not involved in children's television when Cooney recruited them. At first, Cooney planned to divide the show's production of five episodes a week among several teams, but she was advised by CBS vice-president of programming Michael Dann to use only one. This production team was led by Connell, who had gained experience producing many episodes in a short period of time, a process called "volume production", during his eleven years working on Captain Kangaroo.

The CTW hired Harvard University professor Gerald S. Lesser to design the show's educational objectives and establish and lead a National Board of Advisers. Instead of providing what Lesser called "window dressing", the Board actively participated in the construction of educational goals and creative methods. At the Board's direction, Lesser conducted five three-day curriculum planning seminars in Boston and New York City in summer 1968. The purpose of the seminars was to ascertain which school-preparation skills to emphasize in the new show. The producers gathered professionals with diverse backgrounds to obtain ideas for educational content. They reported that the seminars were "widely successful", and resulted in long and detailed lists of possible topics for inclusion in the Sesame Street curriculum; in fact, the seminars produced more suggested educational objectives than could ever be addressed by one television series.

Instead of focusing on the social and emotional aspects of development, the producers decided to follow the suggestions of the seminar participants and emphasize cognitive skills, a decision they felt was warranted by the demands of school and the wishes of parents. The objectives developed during the seminars were condensed into key categories: symbolic representation, cognitive processes, and the physical and social environment. The seminars set forth the new show's policy about race and social issues and provided the show's production and creative team with "a crash course" in psychology, child development, and early childhood education. They also marked the beginning of Jim Henson's involvement in Sesame Street. Cooney met Henson at one of the seminars; Stone, who was familiar with Henson's work, felt that if they could not bring him on board, they should "make do without puppets".

The producers and writers decided to build the new show around a brownstone or an inner-city street, a choice Davis called "unprecedented". Stone was convinced that in order for inner-city children to relate to Sesame Street, it needed to be set in a familiar place. Despite its urban setting, the producers decided to avoid depicting more negativity than what was already present in the child's environment. Lesser commented, "[despite] all its raucousness and slapstick humor, Sesame Street became a sweet show, and its staff maintains that there is nothing wrong in that".

The new show was called the "Preschool Educational Television Show" in promotional materials; the producers were unable to agree on a name they liked and waited until the last minute to make a decision. In a short, irreverent promotional film shown to public television executives, the producers parodied their "naming dilemma". The producers were reportedly "frantic for a title"; they finally settled on the name that they least disliked: Sesame Street, inspired by Ali Baba's magical phrase, although there were concerns that it would be too difficult for young children to pronounce. Stone was one of the producers who disliked the name, but, he said, "I was outvoted, for which I'm deeply grateful".

The responsibility of casting for Sesame Street fell to Jon Stone, who set out to form a cast where white actors were in the minority. He did not begin auditions until spring 1969, several weeks before five test shows were due to be produced. He filmed the auditions, and Palmer took them into the field to test children's reactions. The actors who received the "most enthusiastic thumbs up" were cast. For example, Loretta Long was chosen to play Susan when the children who saw her audition stood up and sang along with her rendition of "I'm a Little Teapot". Stone reported that casting was the only aspect that was "just completely haphazard". Most of the cast and crew found jobs on Sesame Street through personal relationships with Stone and the other producers. Stone hired Bob McGrath (an actor and singer best known at the time for his appearances on Mitch Miller's sing-along show on NBC) to play Bob, Will Lee to play Mr. Hooper, and Garrett Saunders to play Gordon.

Use of research in production
Sesame Street was the first children's television program that used a curriculum with clear and measurable outcomes, and was the first to use research in the creation of the show's design and content. Research in Sesame Street had three functions: to test if the show was appealing to children, to discover what could be done to make the show more appealing, and to report to the public and the investors what impact the show had on its young viewers. Ten to fifteen percent of the show's initial budget of $8 million was devoted to research, and researchers were always present in the studio during the show's filming. A "Writer's Notebook" was developed to assist writers and producers in translating the research and production goals into televised material; this connected the show's curriculum goals and its script development. The Muppet characters were created to fill specific curriculum needs: Oscar the Grouch, for example, was designed to teach children about their positive and negative emotions. Lesser called the collaboration between researchers and producers, as well as the idea of using television as an educational tool, the "CTW model". Cooney agreed, commenting, "From the beginning, we—the planners of the project—designed the show as an experimental research project with educational advisers, researchers, and television producers collaborating as equal partners".

The producers of Sesame Street believed education through television was possible if they captured and sustained children's attention; this meant the show needed a strong appeal. Edward Palmer, the CTW's first Director of Research and the man Cooney credited with building the CTW's foundation of research, was one of the few academics in the late 1960s researching children's television. He was recruited by the CTW to test if the curricula developed in the Boston seminars were reaching their audience effectively. Palmer was also tasked with designing and executing the CTW's in-house research and with working with the Educational Testing Service (ETS). His research was so crucial to Sesame Street that Gladwell asserted, "... without Ed Palmer, the show would have never lasted through the first season".

Palmer and his team's approach to researching the show's effectiveness was innovative; it was the first time formative research was conducted in this way. For example, Palmer developed "the distractor", which he used to test if the material shown on Sesame Street captured young viewers' attention. Two children at a time were brought into the laboratory; they were shown an episode on a television monitor and a slide show next to it. The slides would change every seven seconds, and researchers recorded when the children's attention was diverted away from the episode. They were able to record almost every second of Sesame Street this way; if the episode captured the children's interest 80–90% of the time, the producers would air it, but if it only tested 50%, they would reshoot. By the fourth season of the show, the episodes rarely tested below 85%.

July 1969 test episodes
During the production of Sesame Street's first season, producers created five one-hour episodes to test the show's appeal to children and examine their comprehension of the material. Not intended for broadcast, they were presented to preschoolers in 60 homes throughout Philadelphia and in day care centers in New York City in July 1969. The results were "generally very positive"; children learned from the shows, their appeal was high, and their attention was sustained over the full hour. However, the researchers found that although children's attention was high during the Muppet segments, their interest wavered during the "Street" segments, when no Muppets were on screen. This was because the producers had followed the advice of child psychologists who were concerned that children would be confused if human actors and Muppets were shown together. As a result of this decision, the appeal of the test episodes was lower than the target.

The Street scenes, as Palmer described them, were "the glue" that "pulled the show together", so producers knew they needed to make significant changes. On the basis of their experience on Captain Kangaroo, Connell, Stone, and Gibbon thought the experts' opinions were "nonsense"; Cooney agreed. Lesser called their decision to defy the recommendations of their advisers "a turning point in the history of Sesame Street". The producers reshot the Street segments; Henson and his coworkers created Muppets that could interact with the human actors, specifically Oscar the Grouch and Big Bird, who became two of the show's most enduring characters. In addition, the producers found Saunders' role as Gordon not to be as likable by children watching the show, resulting in the character being recast by Matt Robinson, who was initially the show's filmed segments producer. These test episodes were directly responsible for what Gladwell called "the essence of Sesame Street—the artful blend of fluffy monsters and earnest adults".

Premiere and first season (1969–1970)
Two days before the show's premiere, a thirty-minute preview entitled This Way to Sesame Street aired on NBC. The show was financed by a $50,000 grant from Xerox. Written by Stone and produced by CTW publicist Bob Hatch, it was taped the day before it aired. Newsday called the preview "a unique display of cooperation between commercial and noncommercial broadcasters".

The first season of Sesame Street premiered on November 10, 1969. It was widely praised for its originality, and was well received by parents as well as children. The show reached only 67.6% of the nation, but earned a 3.3 Nielsen rating, meaning 1.9 million households and 7 million children watched it each day. In Sesame Street's first season, the ETS reported that children who watched the show scored higher in tests than less-frequent viewers.

In November 1970, the cover of Time magazine featured Big Bird, who had received more fan mail than any of the show's human hosts. The magazine declared, "... It is not only the best children's show in TV history, it is one of the best parents' shows as well". An executive at ABC, while recognizing that Sesame Street was not perfect, said the show "opened children's TV to taste and wit and substance" and "made the climate right for improvement". Other reviewers predicted commercial television would be forced to improve its children's programming, something that did not substantially occur until the 1990s. Sesame Street won a Peabody Award, three Emmys, and the Prix Jeunesse award in 1970. President Richard Nixon sent Cooney a congratulatory letter, and Dr. Benjamin Spock predicted the program would result in "better-trained citizens, fewer unemployables in the next generation, fewer people on welfare, and smaller jail populations".

Sesame Street was not without its detractors; there was little criticism of the show in the months following its premiere, but it increased at the end of its first season and beginning of the second season. In May 1970, a state commission in Mississippi voted to not air the show on the state's newly launched public television network, which at the time had only one station in Jackson. A member of the commission leaked the vote to The New York Times, stating that "Mississippi was not yet ready" for the show's integrated cast. A commercial television station in Jackson picked up the show instead. Cooney called the ban "a tragedy for both the white and black children of Mississippi". The state commission reversed its decision three weeks later after the vote made national news.

The producers of Sesame Street made a few changes in its second season. Segments that featured children became more spontaneous and allowed more impromptu dialogue, even when it meant cutting other segments. Since federal funds had been used to produce the show, more segments of the population insisted upon being represented on Sesame Street; for example, the show was criticized by Hispanic groups for the lack of Latino characters in the early years of production. A committee of Hispanic activists, commissioned by the CTW in 1970, called Sesame Street "racist" and said the show's bilingual aspects were of "poor quality and patronizing". The CTW responded to these critics by hiring Hispanic actors, production staff, and researchers. By the mid-70s, Morrow reported that "the show included Chicano and Puerto Rican cast members, films about Mexican holidays and foods, and cartoons that taught Spanish words".

While New York Magazine reported criticism of the presence of strong single women in the show, organizations like the National Organization for Women (NOW) expressed concerns that the show needed to be "less male-oriented". For example, members of NOW took exception to the character Susan, who was originally a housewife. They complained about the lack of, as Morrow put it, "credible female Muppets" on the show; Morrow reported that Henson's response was that "women might not be strong enough to hold the puppets over the long hours of taping". The show's producers responded by making Susan a nurse and by hiring a female writer.

1970s
By the mid-1970s, Sesame Street, according to Davis, had become "an American institution". ETS conducted two "landmark" studies of the show in 1970 and 1971 which demonstrated Sesame Street had a positive educational impact on its viewers. The results of these studies led to the producers securing funding for the show over the next several years, and provided the CTW with additional ways to promote it. By the second season, Sesame Street had become so popular that the design of ETS' experiments to track the show's educational outcomes had to be changed: instead of comparing viewers with a control group of non-viewers, the researchers studied the differences among levels of viewing. They found that children who watched Sesame Street more frequently had a higher comprehension of the material presented.

Producer Jon Stone was instrumental in guiding the show during these years. According to Davis, Stone "gave Sesame Street its soul"; without him "there would not have been Sesame Street as we know it". Frank Oz regarded Stone as "the father of Sesame Street", and Cooney considered Stone "the key creative talent on Sesame Street and "probably the most brilliant writer of children's material in America". Stone was able to recognize and mentor talented people for his crew. He actively hired and promoted women during a time when few women earned top production jobs in television. His policies provided the show with a succession of female producers and writers, many of whom went on to lead the boom in children's programming at Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, and PBS in the 1990s and 2000s. One of these women was Dulcy Singer, who later became the first female executive producer of Sesame Street.

After the show's initial success, its producers began to think about its survival beyond its development and first season and decided to explore other funding sources. The CTW decided to depend upon government agencies and private foundations to develop the show. This would protect it from the financial pressures experienced by commercial networks, but created problems in finding continued support. This era in the show's history was marked by conflicts between the CTW and the federal government; in 1978, the U.S. Department of Education refused to deliver a $2 million check until the last day of the CTW's fiscal year. As a result, the CTW decided to depend upon licensing arrangements, publishing, and international sales for its funding. Henson owned the trademarks to the Muppet characters: he was reluctant to market them at first, but agreed when the CTW promised that the profits from toys, books, and other products were to be used exclusively to fund the CTW. The producers demanded complete control over all products and product decisions; any product line associated with the show had to be educational, inexpensive, and not advertised during its airings. The CTW approached Random House to establish and manage a non-broadcast materials division. Random House and the CTW named Christopher Cerf to assist the CTW in publishing books and other materials that emphasized the curriculum. In 1980, the CTW began to produce a touring stage production based upon the show, written by Connell and performed by the Ice Follies.

Shortly after the premiere of Sesame Street, the CTW was approached by producers, educators, and officials in other nations, requesting that a version of the show be aired in their countries. Former CBS executive Mike Dann left commercial television to become vice-president of the CTW and Cooney's assistant; Dann began what Charlotte Cole, vice president for the CTW's International Research department, called the "globalization" of Sesame Street. A flexible model was developed, based upon the experiences of the creators and producers of the original show. The shows came to be called "co-productions", and they contained original sets, characters, and curriculum goals. Depending upon each country's needs and resources, different versions were produced, including dubbed versions of the original show and independent programs. By 2016, 39 different coproductions have been created and produced, "each with its own local name, its own Muppets..., and its own educational objectives designed to meet the educational needs of local children". By its 50th anniversary in 2019, 150 million children viewed over 150 versions of Sesame Street in 70 languages. The New York Times reported in 2005 that income from the CTW's international co-productions of the show was $96 million.

Sesame Street's cast expanded in the 1970s, better fulfilling the show's original goal of greater diversity in both human and Muppet characters. The cast members who joined the show were Sonia Manzano (Maria), who also wrote for the show, Northern Calloway (David), Alaina Reed (Olivia), Emilio Delgado (Luis), Linda Bove (Linda), and Buffy Sainte-Marie (Buffy). In 1973, Roscoe Orman became the third actor to play Gordon.

New Muppet characters were introduced during the 1970s. Count von Count was created and performed by Jerry Nelson, who also voiced Mr. Snuffleupagus, a large Muppet that required two puppeteers to operate. Richard Hunt, who, in Jon Stone's words, joined the Muppets as a "wild-eyed 18-year-old and grew into a master puppeteer and inspired teacher", created Gladys the Cow, Forgetful Jones, Don Music, and the construction worker Sully. Telly Monster was performed by Brian Muehl; Marty Robinson took over the role in 1984. Frank Oz created Cookie Monster. Matt Robinson created the "controversial" (as Davis called him) character Roosevelt Franklin. Fran Brill, the first female puppeteer for the Muppets, joined the Henson organization in 1970, and originated the character Prairie Dawn. In 1975, Henson created The Muppet Show, which was filmed and produced in London; Henson brought many of the Muppet performers with him, so opportunities opened up for new performers and puppets to appear on Sesame Street.

The CTW wanted to attract the best composers and lyricists for Sesame Street, so songwriters like Joe Raposo, the show's music director, and writer Jeff Moss were allowed to retain the rights to the songs they wrote. The writers earned lucrative profits, and the show was able to sustain public interest. Raposo's "I Love Trash", written for Oscar the Grouch, was included on the first album of Sesame Street songs, The Sesame Street Book & Record, recorded in 1970. Moss' "Rubber Duckie", sung by Henson for Ernie, remained on the Top-40 Billboard charts for seven weeks that same year. Another Henson song, written by Raposo for Kermit the Frog in 1970, "Bein' Green", which Davis called "Raposo's best-regarded song for Sesame Street", was later recorded by Frank Sinatra and Ray Charles. "Sing", which became a hit for The Carpenters in 1973, and "Somebody Come and Play", were also written by Raposo for Sesame Street.

In 1977 the show became the first to have a depiction of breastfeeding on television.

In 1978, Stone and Singer produced and wrote the show's first special, the "triumphant" Christmas Eve on Sesame Street, which included an O Henry-inspired storyline in which Bert and Ernie gave up their prized possessions—Ernie his rubber ducky and Bert his paper clip collection—to purchase each other Christmas gifts. Bert and Ernie were played by Frank Oz and Jim Henson, who in real life were, like the puppets they played, colleagues and friends. To Davis, this demonstrated the puppeteers' remarkable ability to play "puppetry's Odd Couple". In Singer's opinion, the special—which Stone also wrote and directed—demonstrated Stone's "soul", and Sonia Manzano called it a good example of what Sesame Street was all about. The special won Emmys for Stone and Singer in 1979, beating, among others, the independently produced A Special Sesame Street Christmas for CBS.

By the show's tenth anniversary in 1979, nine million American children under the age of six were watching Sesame Street daily. Four out of five children had watched it over a six-week period, and 90% of children from low-income inner-city homes regularly viewed the show.

1980s
In 1984, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) deregulated commercial restrictions on children's television. Advertising during network children's programs almost doubled, and deregulation resulted in an increase in commercially oriented programming. Sesame Street was successful during this era of deregulation despite the fact that the United States government terminated all federal funding of the CTW in 1981. By 1987, the show was earning $42 million per year from its magazine division, book royalties, product licensing, and foreign income—enough to cover two-thirds of its expenses. Its remaining budget, plus a $6 million surplus, was covered by revenue from its PBS broadcasts.

According to Davis, Sesame Street's second decade was spent "turning inward, expanding its young viewers' world". The show's curriculum grew to include more "affective" teaching—relationships, ethics, and positive and negative emotions. Many of the show's storylines were taken from the experiences of its writing staff, cast, and crew.

In 1982, Will Lee, who had played Mr. Hooper since the show's premiere, died. For the 1983 season, the show's producers and research staff decided they would explain Mr. Hooper's death to their preschool audience, instead of recasting the role: the writer of that episode, Norman Stiles, said, "We felt we owed something to a man we respected and loved". They convened a group of psychologists, religious leaders, and other experts in the field of grief, loss, and separation. The research team conducted a series of studies before the episode to ascertain if children were able to understand the messages they wanted to convey about Mr. Hooper's death; the research showed most children did understand. Parents' reactions to the episode were, according to the CTW's own reports, "overwhelmingly positive". The episode, which won an Emmy, aired on Thanksgiving Day in 1983 so parents could be home to discuss it with their children. Author David Borgenicht called the episode "poignant"; Davis called it "a landmark broadcast" and "a truly memorable episode, one of the show's best". Caroll Spinney, who played Big Bird and who drew the caricatures prominently used in the episode, reported the cast and crew were moved to tears during filming.

In the mid-1980s, Americans were becoming more aware of the prevalence of child abuse, so Sesame Street's researchers and producers decided to "reveal" Mr. Snuffleupagus in 1985. "Snuffy" had never been seen by any of the adults on the show and was considered Big Bird's "imaginary friend". The show's producers were concerned about the message being sent to children; "If children saw that the adults didn't believe what Big Bird said (even though it was true), they would be afraid to talk to adults about dramatic or disturbing things that happened to them".

For the 1988 and 1989 seasons, the topics of love, marriage, and childbirth were addressed when the show presented a storyline in which the characters Luis and Maria fall in love, marry, and have a child named Gabi. Sonia Manzano, the actress who played Maria, had married and become pregnant; according to the book Sesame Street Unpaved, published after the show's thirtieth anniversary in 1999, Manzano's real-life experiences gave the show's writers and producers the idea. Before writing began, research was done to gain an understanding of what previous studies had revealed about preschoolers' understanding of love, marriage, and family. The show's staff found that at the time that there was very little relevant research done about children's understanding of these topics, and no books for children had been written about them. Studies done after the episodes about Maria's pregnancy aired showed that as a result of watching these episodes, children's understanding of pregnancy increased.

1990s
Davis called the 1990s a "time of transition on Sesame Street". Several people involved in the show from its beginnings died during this period: Jim Henson in 1990 at the age of 53 "from a runaway strep infection gone stubbornly, foolishly untreated"; songwriter Joe Raposo from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma fifteen months earlier; long-time cast member Northern Calloway of cardiac arrest in January 1990; puppeteer Richard Hunt of AIDS in early 1992; CTW founder and producer David Connell of bladder cancer in 1995; director Jon Stone of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 1997; and writer Jeff Moss of colon cancer in 1998.

By the early 1990s, Sesame Street was, as Davis put it, "the undisputed heavyweight champion of preschool television". Parade Magazine reported in 2019 that the show's music had been honored with 11 children's Grammys. The show's dominance however, was challenged for the first time by another PBS television show for preschoolers, Barney & Friends, causing Sesame Street's ratings to decline. The producers of Sesame Street responded, at the show's twenty-fifth anniversary in 1993, by expanding and redesigning the show's set, calling it "Around the Corner". With Michael Loman as the new executive producer of the show, new human and Muppet characters were introduced, including Zoe (performed by Fran Brill), baby Natasha and her parents Ingrid and Humphrey, and Ruthie (played by comedian Ruth Buzzi). The "Around the Corner" set was dismantled in 1998. Zoe, one of the few characters that survived, was created to include another female Muppet on the show, to break stereotypes of girls, and to provide female viewers with a positive role model. According to Davis, she was the first character developed on the show by marketing and product development specialists, who worked with the researchers at the CTW. (The quest for a "break-out" female Muppet character continued into 2006 with the creation of Abby Cadabby, who was created after nine months of research.) In 1998, for the first time in the show's history, Sesame Street pursued funding by accepting corporate sponsorship. Consumer advocate Ralph Nader urged parents to protest the move by boycotting the show.

For Sesame Street's 30th anniversary in 1999, its producers researched the reasons for the show's lower ratings. For the first time since the show debuted, the producers and a team of researchers analyzed Sesame Street content and structure during a series of two-week-long workshops. They also studied how children's viewing habits had changed since the show's premiere. They found that although Sesame Street was produced for three- to five-year-olds, children began watching it at a younger age. Preschool television had become more competitive, and the CTW's research showed the traditional magazine format was not the best way to attract young children's attention. The growth of home videos during the 1980s and the increase of thirty-minute children's shows on cable had demonstrated that children's attention could be sustained for longer periods of time, but the CTW's researchers found that their viewers, especially the younger ones, lost attention in Sesame Street after 40 to 45 minutes.

Beginning in 1998, a new 15-minute segment shown at the end of each episode, "Elmo's World", used traditional elements (animation, Muppets, music, and live-action film), but had a more sustained narrative. "Elmo's World" followed the same structure each episode, and depended heavily on repetition. Unlike the realism of the rest of the show, the segment took place in a stylized crayon-drawing universe as conceived by its host. Elmo, who represented the three- to four-year-old child, was chosen as host of the closing segment because he had always tested well with this segment of their audience. He was created in 1980 and originally performed by Brian Muehl, and later Richard Hunt, but did not become what his eventual portrayer, Kevin Clash, called a "phenomenon" until Clash took over the role in 1985. Eventually, Elmo became, as Davis reported, "the embodiment" of Sesame Street, and "the marketing wonder of our age" when five million "Tickle Me Elmo" dolls were sold in 1996. Clash believed the "Tickle Me Elmo" phenomenon made Elmo a household name and led to the "Elmo's World" segment.

2000s
In 2000, the Children's Television Workshop changed its name to Sesame Workshop to better reflect its entry into non-television and interactive media. In 2002, Sesame Street's producers went further in changing the show to reflect its younger demographic by fundamentally changing the show's structure, which had relied on "Street scenes" interrupted by live-action videos and animation. The target age for Sesame Street shifted downward, from four years to three years, after the show's 33rd season. As co-executive producer Arlene Sherman stated, "We basically deconstructed the show". The producers expanded upon the "Elmo's World" by changing from a magazine format to a narrative format, which made the show easier for young children to navigate. Sherman called the show's new look "startlingly different". Following its tradition of addressing emotionally difficult topics, Sesame Street's producers chose to address the attacks of 9/11 during this season on its premiere episode, which aired February 4, 2002. This episode, as well as a series of four episodes that aired after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, were used in Sesame Workshop's Community Outreach program.

In 2006, the United States Department of State called Sesame Street "the most widely viewed children's television show in the world". Over half of the show's international co-productions were made after 2001; according to the 2006 documentary The World According to Sesame Street, the events of 9/11 inspired the producers of these co-productions. In 2003, Takalani Sesame, a South African co-production, elicited criticism in the United States when its producers created Kami, the first HIV-positive Muppet, whose purpose was educating children in South Africa about the epidemic of AIDS. The controversy, which surprised Sesame Workshop, was short-lived and died down after Kofi Annan and Jerry Falwell praised the Workshop's efforts. By 2006, Sesame Street had won more Emmy Awards than any other children's show, including winning the outstanding children's series award for twelve consecutive years—every year the Emmys included the category. By 2009, the show had won 118 Emmys throughout its history, and was awarded the Outstanding Achievement Emmy for its 40 years on the air.

The 2008–2009 recession, which led to budget cuts for many nonprofit arts organizations, severely affected Sesame Street; in spring 2009, Sesame Workshop had to lay off 20% of its staff. By the show's 40th anniversary, it was ranked the fifteenth most popular children's show on television. When the show premiered in 1969, 130 episodes a year were produced; starting in 2003, because of rising costs, twenty-six episodes were made. According to the Hollywood Reporter, corporate funding "dried up" and DVD sales "bottomed up". Also by 2009, Sesame Workshop started a new website containing a large library of classic and more recent free video clips, as well as a series of podcasts.

Starting in 2009, the producers of Sesame Street took steps to bring back older viewers; it was also successful in increasing its audience viewership among 3- to 5-year-olds by the end of the 40th season. In 2012, the show's 43rd season, Elmo's World was replaced with Elmo the Musical, which was targeted at the program's older viewers.

2010s
In October 16, 2011, Sesame Street's YouTube channel was compromised by hackers that deleted the entire channel's uploaded videos and replaced them with pornographic content. The channel was closed down in less than 30 minutes by YouTube due to "repeated or severe violations of our Community Guidelines".

In 2014, in response to increased online and mobile viewing and to the increase in competition from other preschool programs, Sesame Workshop and PBS began producing, airing, and streaming a half-hour version of the program. The hour-long version continued to air on PBS in the mornings and the new version, which consisted of fewer segments, aired in the afternoons, when more children watched television. PBS also began to stream full-length episodes on its website, mobile app, and Roku channel. Also in 2014, Sesame Workshop began an online streaming subscription service called Sesame Go, which aired both old and new episodes of the show.

In late 2015, as part of a five-year programming and development deal, it was announced that premium television service HBO would air first-run episodes of Sesame Street. Episodes became available on PBS stations and websites nine months after they aired on HBO. The move came after "sweeping changes in the media business". Sesame Street was operating at a loss of $11 million in 2014; according to the Hollywood Reporter in 2019, it was one of the reasons for the move to HBO the following year. The deal allowed Sesame Workshop to produce more episodes, about 35 new episodes per season, compared to the 18 episodes per season it aired previously, and provided the opportunity to create a spinoff series with the Sesame Street Muppets and a new educational series. Steve Youngwood, SW's Chief Operating Officer, called the move "one of the toughest decisions we ever made". According to The New York Times, the move "drew an immediate backlash". Critics claimed that it favored privileged children over less-advantaged children and their families, the original focus of the show. They also criticized choosing to air first-run episodes on HBO, a network with adult dramas and comedies. In 2017, in response to the changing viewing habits of toddlers, the show's producers decreased its length of episodes presented on all platforms from one hour to thirty minutes, focused on fewer characters, reduced the pop culture references "once included as winks for their parents", and focused "on a single backbone topic".

In April 2017, Sesame Street introduced Julia, the first Muppet with autism. Her puppeteer, Stacey Gordon, is the mother of an autistic son. The character had already been featured in digital and printed storybooks since 2015.

As of its 50th anniversary in 2019, Sesame Street has produced over 4,500 episodes, 35 TV specials, 200 home videos, and 180 albums. Its YouTube channel had almost 5 million subscribers, and the show had 24 million followers on social media. As part of its 50th anniversary PR campaign, Sesame Street conducted a traveling show, featuring some Muppets, between February and December 2019. The "unofficial slogan" of the show's anniversary was "50 Years and Counting", which Underwood called "a nod that we are still going strong".

2020s
In 2020, CNN had aired a few town hall segments with Sesame Street characters to help children understand difficult topics during the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests.

On January 29, 2024, the Elmo X (formerly Twitter) account posted: "Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?" The post currently has at least 219 million views, at least 20K comments, and at least 46K quote responses. The response to the post was overwhelming worry, anxiety, and fear, sparking a larger online and multimedia conversation about mental health.Some of the most-viewed responses include the likes of, "Elmo, life is just hard," and "elmo im gonna be real with you, I dont think I can keep living like this, I feel like oscar the grouch in a world of elmo's." The next day, the Elmo account posted: "Wow! Elmo is glad he asked! Elmo learned that it is important to ask a friend how they are doing. Elmo will check in again soon, friends! Elmo loves you." After that, the Sesame Street social media accounts at large posted similar messages of support, and Sesame Workshop made sure to publicize mental health resources.

title: History of Sesame Street


text:
The 6ths

The 6ths is a band created by Stephin Merritt, also the primary songwriter and instrumentalist behind The Magnetic Fields, The Gothic Archies, and Future Bible Heroes. One story has it that the band was conceived when Merritt, observing that there was no tribute album dedicated to him, decided to make one himself. In the group, Merritt writes and plays songs which are then sung by other artists—a different artist on each track. It has so far produced two well-received albums and many different collaborations.

Releases
The two albums the band released to date are Wasps' Nests in 1995 (Factory Too via London Records) and Hyacinths and Thistles in 1999. Wasps' Nests was preceded by a 7" vinyl single of album track "Heaven in a Black Leather Jacket" in 1993 on Merge Records that contains a B-side, "Rot in the Sun", sung by Merritt himself. The song was also later included on Merritt's Obscurities compilation in 2011.

The names of both albums, as well as the name of the band, are deliberate tongue-twisters. The words are chosen for their abundance of s and th sounds; sixths alone packs one th and three s sounds into one syllable. The band's website refers to the 6ths as "every lisper's nightmare".

The list of singers on Wasps' Nests includes many notable mid-90s indie-rockers, including Barbara Manning, Mary Timony, Dean Wareham (Galaxie 500, Luna, Dean & Britta), Lou Barlow, Chris Knox (Tall Dwarfs), Robert Scott (The Bats, The Clean), Georgia Hubley (Yo La Tengo), and Mark Robinson.

Some of the more notable artists appearing on Hyacinths and Thistles are Bob Mould, Sally Timms (The Mekons), Sarah Cracknell (Saint Etienne), Neil Hannon (The Divine Comedy), Gary Numan, Marc Almond, Momus, Clare Grogan (Altered Images), Melanie, Miss Lily Banquette (Combustible Edison), Katharine Whalen (Squirrel Nut Zippers) and the accomplished toy piano player Margaret Leng Tan. The album also features an improbable duet of singer Odetta accompanied by Lemony Snicket author Daniel Handler on accordion.

"Falling out of Love (with You)" from Wasps' Nests was featured on the popular 90's children's show The Adventures of Pete and Pete.

Two songs from Hyacinths and Thistles, "You, You, You, You, You" and "As You Turn To Go", are featured in the movie Pieces of April and its accompanying soundtrack by Stephin Merritt. "You, You, You, You, You" was featured in Google's 2016 pixel ad.

Their song "Night Falls Like a Grand Piano" was covered by South African group Wonderboom on their 2003 album Tell Someone Who Cares.

Albums

 * Wasps' Nests (1995)
 * Hyacinths and Thistles (2000)

Singles

 * "Heaven in a Black Leather Jacket" b/w "Rot in the Sun" (7" single) (1993)

title: The 6ths