Any kid of my vintage had the phrase “Children’s Television Workshop” burned into their memories, for at the end of every episode of Sesame Street it was announced that Sesame Street was a production of this mysterious cabal.
Well, the Children’s Television Workshop is no more. They’ve changed their name to Sesame Workshop.
And here in Canada, Sesame Street is called Sesame Park. I won’t dare to speculate on why.
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A really unsettling change, which came up on NPR today, is that now one of the Sesame Street characters has HIV. That’s in the edition special for South Africa.
Of course, HIV and AIDS is rampant in South Africa, so it makes sense to me to have an HIV positive character. Apparently, the HIV isn’t supposed to be such a factor in the day-to-day stories, but rather, it’s been introduced to give a human (puppet) face to the illness, and to show children that they can still laugh, have fun and be fun, even though they may be infected.
Heck, they killed Grover. A little too much reality, as they said in Spinal Tap…
From what I’ve heard, seasame street was changed to park, as they were worried kids would think it was a good idea to play on the street.
I’ve heard this as the CBC’s decision to change Sesame Street (Canada version) to Sesame Park:
Since Canada is a less urban (and therefore more rural) country than the US, they changed the name to reflect that notion.
I was told that they changed the name from “Sesame Street” to “Sesame Park” in Canada because kids shouldn’t play in the street. Just like the US, Canada has urban AND rural areas.