It has been one eventful week for both Warner Bros. and HBO Max, one that saw plenty of original content get nixed from the streaming service including roughly 200 episodes of the iconic children’s show, Sesame Street. Sesame Workshop has now taken matters into its own hands and begun uploading full episodes onto its YouTube channel, making the show available to everyone once again.
Sesame Workshop has posted full episodes onto the official Sesame Street YouTube channel, which has 22.9M subscribers. While this move isn’t strictly a response to HBO Max, as the episodes are uploaded to on YouTube regularly, it’s hard not to see the timing of their Twitter reminder as particularly pointed. This makes the series — a PBS staple that was originally intended as a publicly-funded, widely-available series for children of all backgrounds — back to the public on a platform that is free and so widely accessible to use such as YouTube. W
The relationship between HBO and Sesame Workshop dates back to 2015 when the premium channel not only secured dibs on the new episodes of Sesame Street but also exclusive access to the full catalog dating back a number of decades. This type of deal seemingly assured that Sesame Street would continue on for a new generation.
The move by Sesame Workshop to place episodes of Sesame Street on YouTube comes on the heels of the content purge at HBO Max that has been occurring in recent weeks which has affected dozens of series and other properties ranging from the likes of feature-length films such as Batgirl to series including generation, Infinity Train and Summer Camp Island.
Sesame Street, which has been running since 1969 for a total of 52 seasons and over 4,600 episodes, had roughly 200 episodes of its catalog pulled from the streamer. HBO Max had previously been home to 650 episodes of the series; that number has now dwindled down to 456 with a majority of the episodes being removed coming from the first 38 seasons of the show. Anything from Season 39 onward is still available in full and the various spin-offs and one-offs except for Not So Late Show with Elmo are still available on the streamer.
While it’s ironic that the recent slew of HBO Max cancelations includes Sesame Street, a show that emphasizes good ethical values for its young audience, it is very fortunate that in the digital age, Sesame Workshop can make the show accessible to everyone as it has always been intended to be. To check out the available full-length free episodes, visit the Sesame Street YouTube channel.