History of Sesame Street - 1980s

1980s

In 1984, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) deregulated commercial restrictions on children's television. Advertising during network children's programs almost doubled, and deregulation resulted in an increase in commercially oriented programming. Sesame Street was successful during this era of deregulation despite the fact that the United States government terminated all federal funding of the CTW in 1981. By 1987, the show was earning $42 million per year from its magazine division, book royalties, product licensing, and foreign income—enough to cover two-thirds of its expenses. Its remaining budget, plus a $6 million surplus, was covered by revenue from its PBS broadcasts.

"To look back at that period is to appreciate the profound effect that life-cycle events had on the show, offstage and on. There was birth and death, love and loss, courtship and calamity, pain and pleasure, all from a little show whose aims at first were simply to test television's ability to stimulate the brain. That it would also touch the heart was not its original intention, but as each year passed, Sesame Street became as much an emotional pathway for children as an intellectual one".

According to Davis, Sesame Street's second decade was spent "turning inward, expanding its young viewers' world". The show's curriculum grew to include more "affective" teaching—relationships, ethics, and positive and negative emotions. Many of the show's storylines were taken from the experiences of its writing staff, cast, and crew. In 1982, Will Lee, who had played Mr. Hooper since the show's premiere, died. For the 1983 season, the show's producers and research staff decided they would explain Mr. Hooper's death to their preschool audience, instead of recasting the role: the writer of that episode, Norman Stiles, said, "We felt we owed something to a man we respected and loved". They convened a group of psychologists, religious leaders, and other experts in the field of grief, loss, and separation. The research team conducted a series of studies before the episode to ascertain if children were able to understand the messages they wanted to convey about Mr. Hooper's death; the research showed most children did understand. Parents' reactions to the episode were, according to the CTW's own reports, "overwhelmingly positive". The episode, which won an Emmy, aired on Thanksgiving Day in 1983 so parents could be home to discuss it with their children. Author David Borgenicht called the episode "poignant"; Davis called it "a landmark broadcast" and "a truly memorable episode, one of the show's best". Caroll Spinney, who played Big Bird and who drew the caricatures prominently used in the episode, reported the cast and crew were moved to tears during filming.

In the mid-1980s, Americans were becoming more aware of the prevalence of child abuse, so Sesame Street's researchers and producers decided to "reveal" Mr. Snuffleupagus in 1985. "Snuffy" had never been seen by any of the adults on the show and was considered Big Bird's "imaginary friend". The show's producers were concerned about the message being sent to children; "If children saw that the adults didn't believe what Big Bird said (even though it was true), they would be afraid to talk to adults about dramatic or disturbing things that happened to them".

For the 1988 and 1989 seasons, the topics of love, marriage, and childbirth were addressed when the show presented a storyline in which the characters Luis and Maria fall in love, marry, and have a child named Gabi. Sonia Manzano, the actress who played Maria, had married and become pregnant; according to the book Sesame Street Unpaved, published after the show's thirtieth anniversary in 1999, Manzano's real-life experiences gave the show's writers and producers the idea. Before writing began, research was done to gain an understanding of what previous studies had revealed about preschoolers' understanding of love, marriage, and family. The show's staff found that at the time that there was very little relevant research done about children's understanding of these topics, and no books for children had been written about them. Studies done after the episodes about Maria's pregnancy aired showed that as a result of watching these episodes, children's understanding of pregnancy increased.