page_title: Influence of Sesame Street
section_title: Critical reception
hierarchical_section_title: Influence of Sesame Street / Critical reception
caption_attribution_description: English: Joan Ganz Cooney in 1985
context_page_description: The children's television program Sesame Street premiered in 1969 to high ratings, positive reviews, and some controversy, which have continued during its history. Even though the show aired on only 67% of American televisions at the time of its premiere, it earned a 3.3 Nielsen rating, or 1.9 million households. By its tenth anniversary in 1979, 9 million American children under the age of six were watching Sesame Street daily. Its ratings declined in the 1990s, due to societal changes. A survey conducted in 1996 found that by the age of three, 95% of all American children had watched it. By its fortieth anniversary in 2009, it was ranked the fifteenth most popular children's show.
  According to writer Michael Davis, Sesame Street is "perhaps the most vigorously researched, vetted, and fretted-over program". By 2001, there were over 1,000 research studies regarding its efficacy, impact, and effect on American culture. Two landmark summative evaluations, conducted by the Educational Testing Service in 1970 and 1971, demonstrated that Sesame Street had a significant educational impact on its viewers.
context_section_description: Sesame Street was praised from its debut in 1969. Newsday reported that several newspapers and magazines had written "glowing" reports about CTW and co-creator Joan Ganz Cooney. Although the series had been on the air for less than a year, Time Magazine featured Big Bird, who had received more fan mail than any of the show's human hosts, on its cover and declared, " ...It is not only the best children's show in TV history, it is one of the best parents' shows as well". The press overwhelmingly praised the new show; several popular magazines and niche magazines lauded it. A 2010 survey found that most parents supported their children's viewing of Sesame Street and other PBS educational shows, and many educators used them as aides in the classroom.
  David Frost declared Sesame Street "a hit everywhere it goes". An executive at ABC, while recognizing that Sesame Street was not perfect, stated that the show "opened children's TV to taste and wit and substance"... and "made the climate right for improvement". By the end of the show's first season, ratings were high, the song "Rubber Duckie" was on the music charts for nine weeks, and Big Bird appeared on The Flip Wilson Show. Also in 1970, Sesame Street won twenty awards, including a Peabody Award, three Emmys, an award from the Public Relations Society of America, a Clio, and the Prix Jeunesse award. President Richard Nixon sent Cooney a congratulatory letter. Dr. Benjamin Spock predicted that the program would result in "better trained citizens, fewer unemployables in the next generation, fewer people on welfare, and smaller jail populations". By 1995, the show had won two Peabody Awards and four Parents' Choice Awards. In addition, it was the subject of retrospectives at the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum of Modern Art. In 2002, TV Guide ranked the show number 27 on its list of the best television shows of all time; in 2013, TV Guide ranked the show number 30 on its list of the 60 best TV series. Sesame Workshop won a Peabody Award in 2009 for its website, sesamestreet.org, and the show was given Peabody's Institutional Award in 2019 for 50 years of educating and entertaining children globally. As of 2018, Sesame Street has won 189 Emmys.
  Sesame Street was not without its detractors, however. In May 1970, a state commission in Mississippi voted to exclude to host the show on its state educational TV network owing to concerns over the show's inclusive racial message. A member of the commission told the New York Times, that "Mississippi was not yet ready" for the show's integrated cast. Cooney called the commission's decision "a tragedy for both the white and black children of Mississippi". The Mississippi commission later reversed its decision 22 days later, after the vote had made national news.
  According to Children and Television, Lesser's account of the development and early years of Sesame Street, there was little criticism of the show in the months following its premiere, but it increased at the end of its first season and beginning of the second season. Lesser put the early criticism into four categories: educational goals, how the goals were chosen and obtained, the show's possible unintended effects, and its portrayal of minorities and women. Historian Robert W. Morrow suggested that much of the early criticism, which he called "surprisingly intense", stemmed from cultural and historical reasons in regards to, as he put it, "the place of children in American society and the controversies about television's effects on them".
  The "most important" studies that found negative effects of Sesame Street were conducted by educator Herbert A. Sprigle and psychologist Thomas D. Cook during its first two seasons. Both studies found that the show increased the educational gap between poor and middle-class children. Morrow reported that these studies had little impact on the public discussion about Sesame Street. Social scientist and Head Start founder Urie Bronfenbrenner criticized the show for being too wholesome, stating, "The old, the ugly or the unwanted is simply m
caption: Joan Ganz Cooney, co-creator of Sesame Street and co-founder of the Sesame Workshop, in 1985
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