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How Sesame Street Survived the Decline of Broadcast Television
An outsider CEO brought some much-needed fresh thinking to the beloved but troubled franchise
Big institutional challenges come in many shapes and sizes. But they all have this in common: conventional approaches through established organizations can’t do enough to address them, and those establishments might themselves be part of the problem. The world is not getting better by itself. Making the world a better place demands more and better leaders.
When leaders see the wider scope of problems, are aware of the multiple dimensions and complexity, and challenge existing structures and constraints, they can propel existing organizations to reach greater heights. Institutional change that reinvents organizations takes advanced leadership skills to wrestle with ambiguous problems, deal with contending stakeholders, and take positive actions across sectors.
To see what this looks like in action, let’s look at one of the happiest places on the planet: Sesame Street. Sesame Street began outside the education establishment, using the power of a recently ubiquitous medium, television, to beam directly into homes to provide early learning as an alternative to formal preschools, which weren’t available to everyone anyway. Sesame Street was home to appealing characters such as Big Bird, a big yellow Muppet, and his friends, both other Muppets and human companions. Together, they taught toddlers their numbers and letters. This was a huge advance on an important problem: early childhood education for every child regardless of family income.
Breaking out of the TV box vastly enhanced the potential for impact on the children who need Sesame Street the most.
But by 2014, Big Bird was really sick. The big yellow guy kept up a good front, but all around him, Sesame Street was full of potholes. Its parent, Sesame Workshop, was a failing icon; once a pioneer, it was running out of money and losing audience share. Sesame Workshop (which began life as the Children’s Television Workshop) had always played an outsized role in early childhood education, attracting enormous audiences worldwide. The problem…
