How Sesame Street Taught Kids to Watch TV

It seems to me the nuances of marketing methods are lost on the crowd whose cognitive skills are still trying to master what letter goes in front of M in the Alphabet.

Adults will get the parodies. Children, by and large, won't since they have little to which to compare it in a real world setting. Take for example the phrase "Brought to you by 8!" as the example above mentioned. A child may or may not know that 8 is a number. This, in turn may engender in the child the idea that 8 is an entity capable of paying for ads. On the other hand, the similar announcement, "Brought to you by 'our sponsor'" may make the child think that 'our sponsor' is a number they haven't taught yet on Sesame Street.

When evaluating television content from an adult frame of mine, one forgets that children often believe in fantastic things. They believe in things that adults may have forgotten or have grown to understand aren't real or even possible. Simply put, children do not have the real-world experience to see the irony behind the 'lesson' this author seems to think was taught. It's certainly possible that a particularly bright child will 'get it'. But given the consuming habits of the American public over the last 20 years and the marketing methods employed by ad agencies over that same time frame, the evidence that those who watched Sesame Street are more TV media savvy than the rest is scant, at best.

Sesame Street surely has taught innumerable children many things - but I would call it teaching children to become savvy and discerning television viewers more of a stretch than even a child's imagination is capable of reaching.

[...] Happy 40th birthday, "Sesame Street" As Robert Lloyd notes, in a message to "Sesame": "You are 40 years old now, just a year younger than Mickey Mouse was the year you arrived on television — and he was semi-retired by then, while you still report to work each day. This very morning you begin your 41st season, you and your cast of aging humans and ageless Muppets, with three first-episode veterans still in residence…That kind of continuity is rare, if not otherwise nonexistent, on television. Certainly there is no other children's show to match you for longevity, cultural penetration or global reach." NYC gives "Sesame" its own street corner // Watch Michelle Obama on "Sesame" Meet the (black) man behind Elmo // "Sesame" let kids acknowledge the media world [...]

[...] It’s the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street!!! Fascinating coverage. There’s NY Times’ Alessandra Stanley on the subject of changes in the world that Sesame Street (and its viewers) exist. Time’s James Poniewozik posits that Sesame Street helped make a couple of generations of disce.... [...]

[...] “I like to think that, in some small way, Sesame also taught kids to be smarter media consumers, and that this was as valuable a service as teaching the alphabet. By spoofing TV, the show didn't just captivate kids; it also taught by example that a news show or an entertainment show has its own rules and conventions—it taught kids that shows are shows, performed by people for cameras, and not reality. It deflated the pomposity of news anchors for kids, and showed them by referencing the traditions of commercial TV (“brought to you by the number 8,” etc.) that TV is in the business of selling you things.” (Read the whole article at: http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2009/11/10/sesame-street-raising-little-media-critics-for-40-years/) [...]