Sesame Workshop

Sesame Workshop

Founded	May 20, 1968; 56 years ago (1968-05-20)
Founders	Joan Ganz Cooney Lloyd Morrisett
Type	Non-profit
Tax ID no.	13-2655731
Legal status	501(c)(3)
Headquarters	1 Lincoln Plaza
Location	New York City, US
Area served	Worldwide
President	Sherrie Westin
CEO	Sherrie Westin
Subsidiaries	Sesame Street Inc Sesame Workshop Communications Inc Sesame Workshop Initiatives India PLC SS Brand Management Shanghai
Revenue	US$104,728,963 (2014)
Expenses	US$111,255,622 (2014)
Employees	813 (2013)
Website	sesameworkshop.org
Formerly called	Children's Television Workshop (CTW) (1968–2000)
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Sesame Workshop (SW), originally known as the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), is an American nonprofit organization that has been responsible for the production of several educational children's programs—including its first and best-known, Sesame Street—that have been televised internationally. Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett developed the idea to form an organization to produce the Sesame Street television series. They spent two years, from 1966 to 1968, researching, developing, and raising money for the new series. Cooney was named as the Workshop's first executive director, which was termed "one of the most important television developments of the decade."^[4]

Sesame Street premiered on National Educational Television (NET) as a series run in the United States on November 10, 1969, and moved to NET's successor, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), in late 1970. The Workshop was formally incorporated in 1970. Gerald S. Lesser and Edward L. Palmer were hired to perform research for the series; they were responsible for developing a system of planning, production, and evaluation, and the interaction between television producers and educators, later termed the "CTW model". The CTW applied this system to its other television series, including The Electric Company and 3-2-1 Contact. The early 1980s were a challenging period for the Workshop; difficulty finding audiences for their other productions and a series of bad investments harmed the organization until licensing agreements stabilized its revenues by 1985.

Following the success of Sesame Street, the CTW developed other activities, including unsuccessful ventures into adult programs, the publications of books and music, and international co-productions. In 1999 the CTW partnered with MTV Networks to create an educational channel called Noggin. The Workshop produced a variety of original series for Noggin, including The Upside Down Show, Sponk! and Out There. In June 2000, the CTW changed its name to Sesame Workshop to better represent its activities beyond television.

By 2005, income from the organization's international co-productions of the series was $96 million. By 2008, the Sesame Street Muppets accounted for $15–17 million per year in licensing and merchandising fees. Sherrie Westin is the president of the company, starting in 2021.