Sesame Workshop (1996-present)

Sesame Workshop (SW), originally known as the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), is an American nonprofit organization and an educational children’s television series that has been responsible for the production of several educational children's programs—including its first and best-known, Sesame Street—that have been televised internationally. Television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and foundation executive Lloyd Morrisett developed the idea to form an organization to produce Sesame Street, a television series that would help children, especially those from low-income families, prepare for school. They spent two years, from 1966 to 1968, researching, developing, and raising money for the new series. Cooney was named as the Workshop's first executive director, which was termed "one of the most important television developments of the decade."

Projects:

 * Sesame Street's Muppets (seasons 1 -) (November 10, 1969 - present)
 * Play with Me (April 1, 2002 - September 2, 2007) (Noggin)
 * Panwapa (October 9, 2007 - August 6, 2009) (Universal Kids)
 * The Furchester Hotel (September 26, 2014 - October 29, 2017)
 * The Not-Too-Late Show with Elmo (May 27, 2020 - present)

Animated Series

 * Sesame Street's Muppets (seasons 52 - present) (HBO/PBS)
 * Mecha Builders (May 9, 2022 - present) (Cartoon Network)

1996-2015: The PBS Era

 * 1) They kept introducing pointless new Muppets (despite their positives on the Muppet Wiki) to Sesame Street doing drastic changes to the show's street set and format during these years, although it is debatable.
 * 2) *Whenever they introduced new characters to Sesame Street, most of them would come off as annoying, sentimental, dull, bland, stupid, idiotic, or obnoxious.
 * 3) **For example, Abby Cadabby was made because the crew wanted the show to have more prominent female Muppets. She also solves her friends' problems with magic in some episodes, which is not how things work in real life, even though it's obviously because she's a fairy.
 * 4) They have a lack of care for their non-Sesame properties and they like to pretend that some of the shows they made don't exist.
 * 5) *The Sagwa franchise went dormant after the show's cancellation, due to a lack of merchandise as well as PBS not being able to compete with news coverage during the 9/11 attacks.
 * 6) *Barely anything has been done with Dragon Tales since it was cancelled in 2005 and dropped from the air in 2010. With Sony Pictures Television co-owning the rights to the series and music rights issues, it is unlikely to ever see an official re-release.
 * 7) *Though they revived The Electric Company in January 23, 2009 (thus marks the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street), it was cancelled in April 3, 2011 and the franchise has gone dormant since.
 * 8) **The original 1971 series is hard to come across, as only 40 episodes were released on DVD (followed by another 29 on iTunes) and the show was last rerun on Noggin in 2002.
 * 9) *They rarely give the older seasons of Sesame Street any attention apart from releasing edited versions of episodes on HBO Max and uploading sketches from the seasons on YouTube. This has caused the newer seasons to gain more recognition among children.
 * 10) Nothing has been heard about Square One TV since Math Talk was cancelled. It is also unavailable for streaming or on DVD.
 * 11) Starting in November 16, 1998, they began accepting corporate sponsors to raise funds for Sesame Street and other projects on PBS airings. While it was somewhat justified to increase funding for multiple projects alongside Sesame Street as well as their new network, Noggin, it still defeats the purpose of being a non-profit organization by ending in December 31, 2015.
 * 12) In 2012, despite his false sexual allegations later being cleared out, they had Kevin Clash resign from Sesame Street no matter what—even if it was his decision to resign from the show.

2016-2022: The HBO Max and New Era

 * 1) In 2016, they fired the actors who played Bob, Gordon, Luis, Susan, Maria, Gina, etc. from Sesame Street (although only Bob, Gordon and Luis actually got fired, while Susan, Maria, Gina, Leela, Miles, Gabi, etc. mostly chose to retire themselves sometime before 2016) for no apparent reason. Most of them did return in the 50th Anniversary special, The Power of We special, and Sesame Workshop: Welcome Sesame: A Digital Special Event, but it feels like nowadays that they're all completely retconned out the show like they never even existed.
 * 2) They made a special about racial justice called The Power of We. The whole special basically panders to political left-wingers.
 * 3) A third Sesame Street movie has been in development for more than 10 years now (it began development in 2012) and was supposed to be released in 2022, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the movie hauled production in 2020.
 * 4) **In August 2022, HBO Max removed almost all of the classic Sesame Street episodes, but on December 13, 2022, the service is about to end every all of the classic Sesame Street episodes.

Good Qualities

 * 1) They still make some good shows like Dragon Tales, Sagwa the Chinese Siamese Cat, The Electric Company (both the 1971 and 2009 versions), Square One TV, Tiny Planets (co-produced with Pepper's Ghost Productions Ltd.), and Ghostwriter.
 * 2) They introduce several good new characters to Sesame Street like Julia, Gabrielle, Tamir, Karli, Wes, Tango, and Ji-Young, along with the newest human character Charlie.
 * 3) They brought back Sesame Street's original format for two episodes in Season 38.