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:
 * seasons 1-32, 38-39 (1969-2008)
 * seasons 33-37, 40-present (2002-present)

1996-2015

 * 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, they would often come off as annoying, sentimental, dull, bland, stupid, idiotic, or obnoxious.
 * 3) **One of the worst examples of this is Abby Cadabby, who only made because the crew wanted the show to have more prominent female Muppets. She also solves her friends' problems with magic (which is justified because she's a fairy) in some episodes, which is not how things work in real life.
 * 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 there are almost no full episodes of the series on YouTube and only 40 episodes were released on DVD.
 * 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) **In August 2022, HBO Max removed almost all of the classic Sesame Street episodes.
 * 11) Nothing has been heard about Square One TV since Math Talk was cancelled. It is also unavailable for streaming or on DVD.
 * 12) 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.
 * 13) 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-present: The HBO // HBO Max // New Era

 * 1) Bad to mediocre recasting decisions for some characters, such as Matt Vogel as Big Bird (who sounds deeper and more nasally than Caroll Spinney) and the Count, and Jennifer Barnhart as Zoe (who barely sounds anything like Fran Brill).
 * 2) By 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) 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.
 * 3) Nowadays, they work with Autism Speaks, an organization that used to dehumanize people with autism. They dropped the cure statement in 2016.
 * 4) *Also, they now work with Global Tech Link, and organization that monopolizes, and and exploits families dealing with incarceration.
 * 5) They made a special about racial justice called The Power of We. The whole special basically panders to political left-wingers.
 * 6) A third Sesame Street movie has been in development hell for 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 haulted production in 2020.

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.

Trivia

 * Although they revived the spin-off Rechov Sumsum (aka. Shalom Sesame) in December 15, 2006 (in the Middle East on Israel’s Hop!) and in October 5, 2010 (in North America), it was no sponsors.
 * They revived all the international co-productions of Sesame Workshop in more than 160 countries.
 * They revived Sesame Street in the HBO Era from season 1, season 2, season 3, season 4, season 5, season 6, season 7, season 8, season 9, and season 10 from January 16, 2016 to 2025.