Longtime children’s favorite, and PBS staple, Sesame Street is set to debut on streaming giant Netflix, the two announced on Monday.
Netflix says that the venerable kid’s show will begin streaming sometime later this year, but the show will also continue appearing on PBS and its app, according to the Associated Press.
“This unique public-private partnership will enable us to bring our research-based curriculum to young children around the world with Netflix’s global reach, while ensuring children in communities across the U.S. continue to have free access on public television to the ‘Sesame Street’ they love,” Sesame Workshop said in a statement.
Producers have also announced a major change to the show’s format. Instead of the previous half-hour format, the Netflix episodes will be comprised of an eleven-minute story.
The deal with Netflix comes on the heels of the lapsing of the show’s former deal with Warner Bros. Discovery, which began airing the series in 2016. Warner’s will list the show’s past episodes through 2027, but no new episodes will be added.
The new deal comes on the heels of efforts by the Trump administration to cut federal funding to the show’s PBS partner.
The cut in federal dollars has already precipitated a “significant downsize” in the Sesame Workshop workforce, Breitbart News reported early this month.
“Given that our largest single expense is people and benefits, we must downsize significantly and make what we hope will be temporary changes to our benefits and bonus program,” said President and CEO Sherrie Rollins Westin. “These changes are necessary to ensure that the Workshop is poised to continue to deliver on its mission for years to come, but that does not make the human impact of these reductions any less painful.”
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