The story of Sesame Street‘s veteran human cast members getting laid off, or actually not getting laid off, continues to develop. After several days of fan tweets, Facebook posts, think pieces, and HBO-vilifying, Sesame Workshop has released another clarifying statement.
Today, they posted this on their official Facebook page:
A message from our CEO, Jeff Dunn:
“We apologize for the misunderstandings around the changing cast roles at Sesame Street. Over more than 40 seasons, Bob McGrath, Emilio Delgado and Roscoe Orman have made enormous contributions to both television and to the lives of preschoolers. They are, and always will be, a key part of the Sesame family.
As always, our curriculum and educational goals drive our story lines and character appearances. These change season-to-season. In 2014, when we first began producing the current half-hour show format, we let all of our cast members know of the shorter story lines and, therefore, reduced appearances. However, our production team also intentionally left the door open for all actors to continue to appear, based on the story lines that were written in any future season. In our latest season, the story lines written did not include appearances by these three actors and we certainly could have done a better job of communicating with them about our ongoing episode plans.
I have been in touch with each of them to meet in person about how we best adapt their talents to the current content needs and preschool media landscape, in a way that honors their historic contributions. We are very grateful for the many loyal fans of Sesame who continue to care so deeply about the show and what it means to them.”
So there’s that. It’s nice to hear they haven’t closed the book on these guys, but I imagine this news won’t get spread around nearly as much as last week’s story. “SESAME STREET FIRED BOB!” is a much more sensational headline than “Sesame Street Isn’t the Same As It Was in 1979 But the Producers Haven’t Forgotten About the Older Cast Members.”
Click here to make enormous contributions to the Tough Pigs forum!
by Ryan Roe – Ryan@ToughPigs.com
