Sesame Street is currently in its 55th season, but massive changes are ahead for the iconic children's show. Max, which currently airs the series, announced a few months ago it would not distribute episodes after 2025, and Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns the streaming service, said around the same time that it would not renew its decade-long deal to fund new episodes, because the show is no longer "as core to our strategy." While production on the 56th season was reportedly set to begin next month, the show has not announced a new distributor, and on Wednesday, Sesame Workshop announced it will "downsize significantly," NPR reports. That announcement came the day after workers on the show asked to unionize.
"Amid the changing media and funding landscape, we have made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our organization," a Sesame Workshop rep says in a statement. In the note to staff sent Wednesday, which can be read in full here, the nonprofit's president and CEO, Sherrie Rollins Westin, also cited "the policy changes affecting our federal funding" as a reason mass layoffs were necessary. At the AV Club, William Hughes notes, "Sesame Workshop gets several million dollars a year in funding from groups like the now deeply-imperiled USAID to do various outreach and public works projects." Those affected by the cuts will be notified Thursday. (More Sesame Street stories.)
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