Day: February 22, 2024

My Top Five: Sesame Street Memories

Posted by

SESAME STREET is a PBS staple, a pop culture touchstone and a groundbreaking educational series. At this point, five generations have grown up with the learning lanes of public broadcasting’s flagship children’s show. Some learned the alphabet with Big Bird, some learned to count with the Count and many just enjoyed the antics of Bert, Ernie, Grover, Cookie Monster and the dozens of other Muppets that have come along over the years.

I can easily (and have) rank my Top Five Sesame Street Bits but I’m tackling something more personal today – my own memories. Things that I have recollected about viewing the show or incidents surrounding the series. Working for a PBS station affords me a few, I think, interesting anecdotes I hope are worth sharing.

So here they are MY TOP FIVE SESAME STREET MEMORIES…

BUMPER STICKERS. Many years ago, back when our on-air fundraising was limited to just a couple of weeks in March, we had SESAME STREET bumper stickers that viewers could request for their children. People would call in during our live telethon (called Festival once upon a time) and give their child’s name and address and volunteers would write it on a sticker and that would go in the post. It may have been only for those pledging during the fund drive, I can’t remember, but at the end of each day the stickers would be collected and mailed out. Of course, being a prankster, I addressed these bumper stickers to many of my friends (who were definitely not children at the time) and had them sent out with the rest. I don’t know if they found them funny or annoying but it amused me.

JIM HENSON’S DEATH. I didn’t say these were all good memories. Sadly, we lost Muppet creator Jim Henson in 1990, far too soon by any measure. He gave us so much joy and laughter, to have his creative genius extinguished was devastating. I can’t even remember how we addressed it on air but I can still feel the oomph of that gut punch 30+ years later.

Continue reading →