Sesame Street - Format

Format

From its first episode, Sesame Street has structured its format by using "a strong visual style, fast-moving action, humor, and music", as well as animation and live-action short films. When Sesame Street premiered, most researchers believed that young children did not have long attention spans, therefore the new show's producers were concerned that an hour-long show would not hold their audience's attention. At first, the show's "street scenes"—the action taking place on its set—consisted of character-driven interactions and were not written as ongoing stories. Instead, they consisted of individual, curriculum-based segments which were interrupted by "inserts" consisting of puppet sketches, short films, and animations. This structure allowed the producers to use a mixture of styles and characters, and to vary the show's pace. By season 20, research had shown that children were able to follow a story, and the street scenes, while still interspersed with other segments, became evolving storylines.

"We basically deconstructed the show. It's not a magazine format anymore. It's more like the 'Sesame' hour. Children will be able to navigate through it easier."

—Executive producer Arlene Sherman, speaking of the show's restructuring in 2002

Upon recommendations by child psychologists, the producers initially decided that the show's human actors and Muppets would not interact because they were concerned it would confuse young children. When the CTW tested the appeal of the new show, they found that although children paid attention to the shows during the Muppet segments, their interest was lost during the "Street" segments. The producers requested that Henson and his team create Muppets such as Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch to interact with the human actors, and the Street segments were re-shot. Sesame Street's format remained intact until the show's later decades, when the changing audience required that producers move to a more narrative format. In 1998 the popular segment "Elmo's World", a fifteen-minute long segment hosted by the Muppet Elmo, was created.