Frank Oz Says Sesame Street Has Gone Downhill. Is He Right? (2019) | Hacker News Reader

Frank Oz Says Sesame Street Has Gone Downhill. Is He Right? (2019)

fatherly.com

33 pointsgjvc65 comments

They are right. Shows are adjusting to capture the little attention spans we have left from the excess use of technology. My 4 y/o loves old episodes of Sesame Street, but the new ones are just visually busy and boring on topics.

I’ve noticed this with many more shows recently and personally don’t subscribe to it. I very much dislike how more shows include distracting visuals, sophomoric humor, and sexual innuendo as if it’s normal for younger kids. It’s not. Rewatching what I watched as a kid at these ages(Barney, Sesame Street, Gullah Gullah island) with my kids definitely shines a light on that.

Hurrah for Gullah Gullah island.

I’ll offer that there are still some modern shows that haven’t ramped up the pacing too bad: Daniel Tiger, Mighty Machines (old Canadian show, can be found on youtube), Tumbleleaf, Bluey (which also offers decent examples of adults playing with young children if that’s something that is struggle with).

> Daniel Tiger

That show really impressed me as an adult, but it is an animation that tries to very closely emulate Mr. Rogers, so it is only natural that it stands out as an exception in today's shows.

Curious if it's a shift in design away from accounting for commercials interleaved every few minutes and now focusing on watching it all at once via streaming.

Even though PBS has changed, originally PBS had no commercial breaks, so Sesame Street was originally intended to watched all at once without breaks.

I didn't realize that. Sure seems like a shift then.

"These days Sesame Street is paced and programmed to fit microscopic attention spans"

This was the first thing I noticed watching an old episode of Sesame Street back to back with a new episode. The pacing of the show was too fast. The camera kept cutting, the puppet jumped from location to location, there was no time to think. And educational shows need to give the audience time to think, otherwise it's just passive entertainment.

Baseless speculation, but: Could it be that the show's writers and directors have the same diminished attention spans as their audience? :)

We're all in the smartphone age today, not just the children. And we probably all feel the psychological effects of its use. (Those who use smartphones at least). So it might be that a scriptwriter from a few decades ago would feel fine with a slower pace, while a modern scriptwriter would feel the pacing was too slow when reading the same script.

Could be, or maybe fewer people have children and those that do have them older, leading to a lack of empathy from the writers. Or perhaps kids attention spans really have decreased. A lot of 1 year olds know how to use a smart phone.

Yes it’s crazy how slow kids are. I was trying to teach my 1 year old daughter some things and thought she just wasn’t getting it. Then I found that if I left a 10 second pause between actions, she would be able to piece together what I was showing her and it would click. Just a personal anecdote, but I definitely underestimated the amount of time needed for young minds to absorb information.

I've noticed this too. It is really pronounced when you watch old movies vs new movies today. Probably because editing was a PITA and now is really easy.

Also the same thing happens with music. I take Jazz or classical music as an example. If you really get into them then I've found listening to most pop music has become slow and boring.

Modern TV shows or streaming shows have lost their opening theme song scenes. I can see for TV to stuff more ads in to make more money. On streaming opening themes could be long but people have no patience so they'd just skip it.

I feel this is a really bad example. If I'm watching one episode a week of course I don't mind watching the opening theme every single time.

If I'm watching six in a row of course I'm going to skip it every time.

A recent example of this is Peacemaker. It is a made-for-streaming show that was on a weekly release schedule, and it has one of the most fun opening sequences I've ever seen. Watching it weekly, I watched the opening every time. But one week I skipped it so I watched two the next week, and of course I skipped it on the second episode that day

Well I also think it is the other way around. Producers think a show should be fast and flashy because else kids don't like it. This is bullshit.

The same is happening in movies. A bad story is sold with great looking explosions.

People like great stories, you don't need flashy graphics for that.

How much of this is down to the editors and producers knowing only the MTV, quick-cut style of video production (which seems to have been en vogue since the '00s) and not having any mentorship or guidance from the old guard? If that style of video production is all you know, then everything is going to have that same quick-cut style of production. Similar to web developers who only know JS...every problem becomes a JS problem to be solved in the JS way. (e.g. if all you have is a hammer...)

There's a bigger problem he's circling around without quite stating it that I had a hard time defining for a while until my wife could articulate it for me: children deserve their innocence. The world will have many harsh lessons for them, but it is cruel and abusive to bombard them with it over curated programming, and with addictively flashy style, in the name of good intentions. Kids deserve the tenderness and slow deliberate care in their viewing that a real adult would give them. It's all well and good to introduce children with autism, or learn about multicultural holidays with representative characters, but there is a really clear line IMHO in most cases for both content and format that is or is not appropriate. Quality children's programming can certainly have a "flavor", but there is a responsibility to treat the kids watching you as of they were your own family, with fertile but fragile minds.

> children deserve their innocence

Please tell your wife that this may be the wisest thing I have read in quite a long while.

Having not grown up in your culture, could you explain more about this bit?

> It's all well and good to introduce children with autism, or learn about multicultural holidays with representative characters, but there is a *really clear line* IMHO in most cases for both content and format that is or is not appropriate.

I, uh, don’t see the really clear line.

Was it not clear from the main point? Actively reducing the innocence of typical children at the target age. You can show them things that are different and in an exciting format without doing that, but when you don't prioritize their right to their innocence, your content and delivery is harmful.

WTF is “innocence”? Where TF is the “clear line”? The books the Danish use to educate their children about sex would be classified as kiddy porn in most of the USA. The books the Saudi’s use to educate their children about sex… don’t exist. But here you are telling us there is a “clear line” without stating what that clear line is.

There is, obviously, no “clear line.” You’re just trying to impose your personal — and very much not clear — morality on others.

You are confusing social norms with capacities to manage harm.

Innocence means that the children are allowed to operate in a framework that let's them understand and learn about things in a way that they can manage.

Hell, some autistic kids can't even manage seeing things that are perfectly unnoticeable to the average kid even in the same city, let alone in another country.

But just as we don't run every televsion network for the autistic, we really don't want to be running pornography on regular kid programming either. It's very telling that you jumped to books, at any rate. I don't know the ones you're talking about or at exactly what age they are targeted, but a book is a much smaller and telegraphed source of content for kids.

Again, you fail to describe any clear line. In fact, you indicate that there is no clear line by providing an example of a child whose line is different from that of another kid.

The medium isn’t the important bit, btw, so you needn’t get hung up on books instead of, say, television or school programmes. The point is that you claim a “clear line” when there is no such thing.

I already stated in multiple ways that the "clear line" is taking deliberate care in programming for children to ensure first and foremost that it won't be likely to any significant degree to rob them of their innocence, a term which I explained further for you. My citation of the example of a child with autism was an exception for a standard of reasonableness when assessing this due diligence. Here's another one in the same vein: some kid has a finger bitten off at age 4 by a rabid dog, and now has a phobia of all dogs. Does that mean content creators are reckless if they include a cartoon dog that barks angrily at someone? Obviously you're dealing with a rare exception that perhaps could be fixed with some standard of a content index for special cases.

If you're going to continue to pretend that this is still all super subjective, I'm gonna have to assume you're not arguing in good faith anymore. There will not be any symbolically notated theorem forthcoming on this topic.

Simply put, you can have a culturally relative definition of content appropriateness and still understand this concept. To your example, premarital sex is a REALLY bad thing to get caught doing in some Arab countries. So yeah, in THOSE countries, the Danish books as you describe might be considered abusive to give to minors if they are demonstrably seen to promote sexual behavior that would harm the children's standing in those societies.

I learned to read from sesame street. Old episodes featured a lot of letter stuff. The letter of the day would be mentioned several times and there would usually be skits and cartoon shorts. These are all gone from the 1/2hour episodes being made now, except for a prerecorded Letter of the Day song in every episode.

There's a TikTok creator who works at sesame street so I asked her about this. She said it's because they don't have time to do it and research shows that kids benefit more from the other stuff: socializing, conflict resolution, etc. Don't know if I agree, but I'm not research.

So I’m very particular about what my daughter watches. She can only watch if she’s going to learn something. So I thought sesame street. My daughter likes the old stuff but not the new stuff. She loves the episodes about a number or letter.

But the new stuff she isn’t interested in.

But she loves Barney. And learns from it. In one episode they were learning about being kind and sharing. And we went to the park where she saw some kids arguing over toys. And she said “mummy those kids are not nice they are not sharing.” And she tries to share her toys now at school. (Tho there is often regret after sharing)

So far I think

Number blocks

Sesame Street (old stuff)

Barney

Are the best shows for kids to learn from.

Tried Bluey? I describe it as a positive family sitcom. There are lessons to the episodes but they do a great job integrating them into the stories. I enjoy watching it on my own.

Unfortunately, only Season 1 is on DVD in the US. If you have Disney+, you can watch 1 & 2. No idea when season 3 will be released in the US.

Thanks, seems there stuff on youtube. It's not on Disney+ in Taiwan :(

But that reminds me, my daughter also enjoyed Blippi. She learned so many names for everyday objects from that show that it was annoying! When we go out she would name everything. In one case I called something a Vehicle to which "No daddy that's a truck!"

Bluey is great. Do kids learn from it? No idea. They sure are entertained by it as are their accompanying adults.

To the gp list I'd add "Alphablocks" and then go with more garage created stuff which can be pretty good. "Kids Learning Tube" "Have Fun Teaching." Be selective, they have quantity, the quality is in there in the obvious places.

edit: Forgot to mention that my son was being very mildly neglected and left to his own devices on youtube with an ipad and used those to teach himself to read between the ages of 2 & 3. He had a particular fascination with symbols and I don't know where that came from so it may not replicate but it is how he did it. I try to be a better parent than that now. :p

I did not know about Alphablocks!

It's not on Netflix :( so will have to get it from YouTube.

Seconded. I’d go as far as to say that it’s the best thing my son has watched.

It’s not as didactic as Sesame Street or other educational shows, but I think he learns a lot from it. Bluey and her family are a good role model.

There's a whole host of quality children's programming in a style that is no longer popular. I suppose you could find it if you tried, but it certainly doesn't come up on any youtube recommendation. Shows like:

    Today's Special
    Read All About It
    Readalong
    Reading Rainbow
    Mr. Rogers
    Square One Television

Maybe this is just personal nostalgia and there's definitely a regional influence, but I believe the focus on education and benefit to children was clear. Much more so than what I'm seeing now. And the crucial thing is that these shows were found naturally by children. They were part of the default programming. You didn't need a parent to control or coerce the child toward them.

The situation now is abysmal. Without careful control a child will end up watching absolute garbage.

On the Mr. Rogers website [0] there are some complete episodes from 1970 currently available. Also, in my region Amazon Prime Video [1] has Mr. Rogers from 1979-2001 available for purchase.

[0]: https://www.misterrogers.org/watch/ [1]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B004DKDOWY/

Without careful control we all will end up watching absolute garbage.

I am now very careful about what i personally watch. People recommend documentaries to me regularly. If it isnt BBC i am very careful to vet its makers before watching. If it is a drama, a check the director out first. There is far too much material out there to waste my time on anything but great tv.

I a currently re-watching James Nesbit in "Babylon" ... great tv is still out there.

Just reading that list brought back memories (born in 1977). I grew up poor, so I didn't have access to a lot of what my middle class peers in that time had (game systems, paid extracurricular activities, or even a VCR) so shows like these were staples of my experience, and perhaps a strong reason I've had a lifelong love of learning.

All the old episodes are available on HBO Max, I’m watching one from the 70s right now on Saturday morning with my toddler. Hand drawn animations, stop motions and original songs with full bands make for an excellent show. Highly recommend.

This is an article from several years ago. It's not an interview with Frank Oz. He's barely quoted in the piece and used as title clickbait. The piece is mostly parental anecdotes and whinging.

Oz's longer rant [1] was about Disney, who don't want Oz touching their Muppets. His Sesame street quote was a minor aside.

And neither this op ed nor Oz's SXSW comments talk about why the Muppets, and especially Sesame Street, are the way they are. CTW turned Sesame Street into a well-honed marketing/child psychology machine. Everything they did, well before Disney's involvement, involved so much testing and measuring and manipulation that . . . Ok, so for context in software terms, who here remembers the news about Google choosing a shade of blue? [2] It's like that but for how to introduce tough subjects to kids. And market the show and associated products to them. Unlike when the show started in the 60s, toddlers are now a market!

Well before the early 2000s when Disney took over, Sesame Street turned into the data-driven committee-ruled kind of place that might make "jazz" but only suitable for elevators. Or toddlers who didn't know better. Committees don't make art. They do make Disney assets, though, so that was a good match.

[1] https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/sxsw/2019-03-13/sxsw-p...

[2] https://bharathbalasubramanian.medium.com/data-driven-decisi...

I'm dismayed that no one's yet mentioned The Electric Company.

Easy Reader was the man! (Didn't he get an Academy Award for that?)

Fargo North, Decoder was my career inspiration!

And I never got out of my head, "Your rich uncle died, and left you all his m..."

Elmo very much brought sesame street down to the lowest common denominator by being omnipresent

excellent observation -- it's the omnipresence which does it

This article extends the OPs critique with a particular focus on Elmo

https://www.google.com/amp/s/kotaku.com/how-elmo-ruined-sesa...

I read that when it came out a few years ago [1], and found myself sadly agreeing with it.

[1] click the article to find the date.

For those that refuse to click an amp link, what's the date?

origin link https://kotaku.com/how-elmo-ruined-sesame-street-1746504585

I am happy to know I'm not alone in thinking Elmo is terrible.

In the UK they blame the audience changing. In the 80's kids 4-14 watched childrens tv. Now its more 4-9 years old. The older kids are gone to playing video games, internetting, reading Harry Potter? So its Peppa Pigg or Smallville with no audience left inbetween.

There is a market for a streaming service that shows all the old children shows. Early Nye. Mr. Rogers. Sesame Street (up to around 1995). Fraggles (for some fun). The Adventures of the Mézga Family. Old Pan Tau. That kind of thing.

Target demographic: Parents who intend to give their kids quality long-form edutainment (while simultaneously keeping them away from smartphones and broadcast TV).

Personally, I don’t enjoy nearly as much as I did when I was 4.

Disappointed that they have a count that doesn't code.

E is for error!

EIEIO

O is for off-by-one, ah-ah-ah!

Watched this when I was younger and amazed it is still a running show keeping up to current trends. I am not sure it can survive in the current format. I think it requires new adaptions for today's time.

How about a cartoon version to start? I think children could also like watching 30 minutes of a particular character like cookie monster for example. I think this will help expand the franchise as well as try new things.

We received two PBS stations at the farmhouse where we lived in the early '70s, so obviously I watched Sesame Street twice a day. If you haven't seen Stevie Wonder's performance of Superstition on the show in 1973, I highly recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ul7X5js1vE

I miss Mr. Wizard. I went back and rewatched the series recently and the kids then were so much smarter and eloquent. Something changed.

My kids are smart and eloquent. It all comes down to how much time you spend with them and how you instruct them.

To be fair, you're comparing a group of child actors being given lines and playing a role to other kids. Not every adult can act well nor speak as eloquently as an actor, much less every child.

I cannot find anything substantial that the author thinks is materially worse about today’s show than the one from his childhood.

The animations and style are different, or the length has changed, but so what. That’s changing with the times.

This feels a bit like an old man ranting “it was better in my day than it is today!” Memories get locked into our brain at certain ages and become out reference point for what we consider “best”, and anything new isn’t as good. We tend to talk about nostalgia with rose color glasses, overemphasizing the the good parts while forgetting the bad.

OK boomer! I’m 42 and have a 3 yr old daughter. I grew up with Sesame Street and I try to watch as much of it with her as possible. (We watch on public television WTTW, not HBO.) I cannot say it’s gone downhill.

One key point pioneered by Sesame Street that’s still true today is trying to make a show that parents watch with their kids because then the learning continues after the show stops. One example is featuring musical acts feature artists recognizable by adults.

Another key point is showing diversity. Sesame Street keeps a variety of characters it has tremendous value. The the author even mentions this as one of the good things! The worked has grown up and we show diversity a lot more today than in the 70’s and 80’s so what Sesame Street pioneered has now been adopted by everyone. The show hasn’t gone downhill, other have risen to the level of excellence.

Another pioneering part of Sesame Street was developing child entertainment around research and learning outcomes. I’m not sure how that compares between the original and today but curious ti know.

This article makes confident assertions one after another that are pure opinion and guesses masquerading as fact. He has no proof about how the show is formatted now vs then but makes assumptions left and right to justify his opinion. Luckily, if he hates how Sesame Street has tried adapting to modern tastes and ideas, he can always find the original episodes and show them to his kids instead.

Well, there is the proof that it "cut a half hour", when you're talking about format. The rest doesn't really consist of confident assertions: it's pretty clear that it's the author's opinion. And it doesn't seem to be wrong.

Article is from 2019, BTW, for those who like to know that kind of thing beforehand.

>"cut a half hour"

Which is hardly shocking as part of a general trend. Forget kids. For adults, conference presentations and a lot of other things have generally cut back and length. And, for me personally, it's mostly a good thing.

Bird Bird, yes. Elmo, No. This heuristic will serve you well.

(2019)

date warriors strike again, saving precious time of those who only click on stuff written this year...

it wouldn't change the relevance if it were written yesterday.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com