Sunday, October 31, 2021

Why Sesame Street is More Vital Than Ever

 

Characters Big Bird, Ernie, Bert, Cookie Monster, Grover, Elmo, Rosita, Abby Cadabby, Julia, and new characters Gabrielle, Tamir, and Tango.

Madeline Fretz - Hi everyone. I just found an article about Sesame Street on the Wall Street Journal, and decided to post it here. The article includes a few Season 52 spoilers, which I'll talk about later. The article was written by David Kamp, the author of the recent Sunny Days book.

As the second week of March 2020 neared its end, the producers of Sesame Street were days away from wrapping principal photography on the program’s 51st season. They never quite got there—at least not in customary fashion. Sesame Street, like so many workplaces, was abruptly shut down in response to the rapid onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Yet Steve Youngwood, the CEO of Sesame Workshop, and Kay Wilson Stallings, the Workshop’s creative chief, recognized that their flagship show could not afford to go silent. In moments of crisis, people often gravitate toward the institutions they trust, and few American institutions are more trusted than Sesame Street.

“We needed to move quickly,” Wilson Stallings says, “because we were hearing from parents, caregivers and providers saying, ‘We’re looking for content that can help kids understand what is happening right now. What is happening? What is Covid?’ ”

For all its virtues, Sesame Workshop is not known for moving quickly. In its original incarnation as the Children’s Television Workshop, the organization, co-founded by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett, was deliberative by design. More than three years of rigorous field study, cross-disciplinary consultation, test screenings and Muppet tweaking by Jim Henson and his team took place between Sesame Street’s conception and the broadcast of its very first episode, on November 10, 1969. Even today, a typical new episode spends about a year in the production pipeline before children at home get to view it.

But the arrival of the pandemic afforded no such luxury of time. “I remember very vividly turning on the TV…it was still the teens of March, and seeing some of the late-night people filming from home,” Youngwood says. “You’re like, ‘Huh—if they can do it, why can’t we do it?’ I remember calling up or texting Kay, ‘Get the Muppets home to the puppeteers. Send them some cameras.’ ”

Within 10 days, Sesame Street had posted its first lockdown-specific content to its YouTube channel: a simple one-minute video in which Elmo offered a “virtual hug” to his viewers, the red fur of his torso filling the screen as he merrily hopped forward. Though the Workshop, in the weeks to come, would provide its puppeteers with mini sets and green screens, Ryan Dillon, who performs Elmo, made do with his own wrinkled curtains for a backdrop.

Just three weeks later, the Workshop released a new half-hour special, Sesame Street: Elmo’s Playdate, complete with a Zoom-like videoconferencing interface and scripted technical glitches. (Grover entered the meeting with his mic off and then accidentally flipped his image upside down.) Such is Sesame Street’s cultural capital that the Workshop was able to draft Tracee Ellis Ross, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Anne Hathaway to appear on short notice and describe how they were coping with sheltering in place.

Sesame Street season 52, which premiered this month on HBO Max, was undertaken entirely in the context of the pandemic, and the new episodes reflect that. The producers shot an uncommon amount of material outdoors. There is a five-episode arc in which Elmo, Rosita, Abby Cadabby, Big Bird, Ernie and Bert visit a real working farm, Harvest Moon Farm & Orchard in New York’s Hudson Valley. In a plotline designed to address the season’s curricular focus on playful problem-solving, Big Bird discovers that his (Muppet) chicken friend, Lottie, is struggling to lay an egg because her nesting box is insufficiently comfortable. The two birds put their feathered heads together and come up with a solution: to use hay to make the nest more cozy. (Spoiler alert: Their idea works, and Lottie succeeds in laying an egg.)

As for season 53, for which shooting is just underway, “Some of these learnings from season 52, we’re looking to adapt,” says Wilson Stallings. “We’re going to do another location shoot, do more with the puppeteers self-shooting remotely in their homes.”  

This is all of a piece with the philosophy of Ganz Cooney, the Workshop’s 91-year-old originator and guiding spirit, who has never stopped referring to Sesame Street as an “experiment,” forever in flux. When Latino viewers protested that the show didn’t adequately represent them, the Workshop introduced Sonia Manzano’s Maria and Emilio Delgado’s Luis in 1971. When the original cast member Will Lee died unexpectedly in 1982, Sesame Street considered recasting his Mr. Hooper role but instead decided to confront the issue of death head-on, with Big Bird cycling through the five stages of grief. Adaptability was baked into the program from the start, as was the ongoing quest to determine the best ways to use screens to educate young children.

The cynical take on Sesame Street is that its golden moment has passed, that it will never again enjoy the reach it had in its funky, ochre-colored 1970s heyday, when an entire generation of kids tuned in en masse to watch Stevie Wonder sing “One-two-threeee, Sesame Streeeet” through a talk box. In recent years, however, Sesame Workshop has adapted well to the fragmented media landscape. Yes, gone forever are the days when a single broadcast commanded a seven-digit audience. But Sesame Street–related programming has insinuated its way into virtually every audiovisual medium.

Sherrie Westin, the Workshop’s president, notes that much of its international audience doesn’t have the easy access to media that Americans do. “We started using WhatsApp, chatbots, any means possible to get content to that parent alone at home, both high-tech and low-tech,” she says. In and around Venezuela, whose economic collapse has precipitated a massive refugee crisis, a displaced family sharing a single smartphone can still receive materials from SĂ©samo, the Spanish-language version of the show, via the WhatsApp messaging platform. In response to the Syrian refugee crisis, the Workshop developed a new Arabic-language iteration of the program called Ahlan Simsim (literally “Welcome Sesame”), which happens to feature the best, weirdest array of new Muppet characters in years: the confident purple monster Basma; her more melancholic, saffron-colored friend Jad; and their goat sidekick, Ma’zooza, along with a mixed-species house band of humanoid and monster musicians.

The Workshop is not a direct-service organization, so it relies on partnerships to disseminate its content. For Ahlan Simsim, which launched in 2020, Westin approached the humanitarian organization International Rescue Committee. “We determined that IRC would be the best partner for us because [of] their presence on the ground in the Middle East…and they have an entire division focused on early education,” says Westin. The costs of pulling off this joint initiative were underwritten by a $100 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation, which considers Ahlan Simsim a form of humanitarian aid.On its home turf, the Workshop has a division called Sesame Street in Communities that provides educational tools and programming, free of charge, to children and caregivers facing major life challenges: incarceration, addiction, foster care, homelessness, divorce, death, trauma. The Communities initiatives are funded by foundations and such private-sector donors as American Greetings and United Healthcare.

These partnerships have proved mostly uncontroversial, but the Workshop has taken some flak for the one it forged with HBO in 2015. Under this arrangement with the cable and streaming network, new episodes of Sesame Street appear exclusively on HBO Max for about 10 months before they are released to PBS. Given that the program, in its formative years, was targeted primarily at America’s most marginalized and needy children—Ganz Cooney described “inner-city youngsters” as the show’s “bull’s-eye”—the premium-service optics are suboptimal.  

Yet those early seasons were the product of a more politically progressive climate in which Sesame Street received half its annual budget from the federal government, a nonstarter in today’s Washington. Youngwood and Wilson Stallings make the case that their partnership with WarnerMedia, the parent company of HBO, and a newer alliance with another streaming service, Apple TV+, have let the Workshop pursue a Marvel Cinematic Universe–like expansion of its programming slate. Click on HBO Max’s “Kids & Family” tab and you’ll find The Not-Too-Late Show With Elmo, a spinoff series in which Elmo hosts a talk show centered around bedtime rituals, and Esme & Roy, a Workshop-produced animated adventure series that launched in 2018. With Warner Bros. Pictures, the Workshop is producing a Sesame Street–branded feature film in which Hathaway co-stars with the program’s characters as a “TV archaeologist” who helps the gang find their way home after they get lost. Apple TV+, meanwhile, now offers Helpsters, a coding-based show starring non-Muppet monster puppets, and Ghostwriter, a live-action mystery series for children of reading age.

Soon these series will be joined by HBO Max’s animated Mecha Builders, which is aimed at kids ages 3 to 5, a little older than Sesame Street’s target demographic, and is organized around a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) curriculum. Wilson Stallings explains the program’s origins with a measure of sheepishness. In the years before Covid-19, she took part in a highly competitive Halloween-costume contest in the Workshop’s offices. One year, a group of employees blew away the competition by basing their costumes on the Japanese genre of anime and manga known as mecha (pronounced like “mecca”), which is devoted to giant biped robots.

“They had a mecha Cookie Monster and it was hilarious,” Wilson Stallings says. Her team had been looking for a show concept for slightly older children, and, suddenly, there it was. “Our Muppet characters become mecha robots,” she says. “What’s the reason behind it? They’re problem-solvers—problem-solvers who use STEM…. It just made sense.”

WarnerMedia also owns CNN, a bit of synergy that facilitated the most socially significant Sesame Workshop programming of last year, its Coming Together: Standing Up to Racism town hall. The special aired on CNN on June 6, 2020, less than two weeks after the murder of George Floyd, as Black Lives Matter demonstrations were happening across the country. The news network’s Erica Hill and Van Jones presided over an array of guests that included Big Bird, Elmo, Rosita, Abby Cadabby, Sonia Manzano and her fellow old-school human cast member Roscoe Orman (who played Gordon for more than 40 years), Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and various scholars and children, all of whom helped provide parents and young children with the vocabulary and framework to discuss racism.

The March 2020 shelter-in-place orders had provided a useful crash course in rapid-response programming. “We had learned how to make things quickly, with confidence that they were 90 percent right. We’d actually done two Covid town halls,” says Youngwood. The “Coming Together” rubric was retained and assigned to the entirety of Sesame Workshop’s new cross-platform racial-justice initiative, a complement to Caring for Each Other, the umbrella term for the organization’s pandemic-related content.

Wilson Stallings, who is Black, had only just been promoted to her executive-VP role in June, so her first few weeks were a baptism by fire. “I wouldn’t say it was daunting; it’s a privilege,” she says. “Nobody else can do [what we do]. Nobody else has the permission. It’s like, ‘If not us, then who?’ We have never shied away from tough topics. It’s expected that we’re going to address them.”

Last October, the Workshop released another quick-turnaround special, The Power of We, in which a pre-existing Black Muppet, Gabrielle, was joined by a new character, her cousin Tamir, who explicitly defined racism to Elmo and Abby as, “You know, how people that look like me and Gabrielle can get treated unfairly because of the color of our skin.” The curricular advisers had introduced another word into the Sesame Street lexicon, upstander, as in someone who actively stands up to prejudice and bullying. “[Kids] can be upstanders for themselves, but they can also be upstanders for others as well,” says Wilson Stallings.

The Power of We culminated in an anthemic new song, “Listen, Act, Unite!,” written and co-performed by Christopher Jackson, the actor, singer and songwriter best known for his collaborations with Lin-Manuel Miranda on In the Heights and Hamilton. Sesame Street’s musical director is Bill Sherman, a fellow member of the Miranda mafia; he co-orchestrated the score of In the Heights, produced the original cast album for Hamilton and, like Jackson, is a member of the improvisational hip-hop group Freestyle Love Supreme.  

“I have this roster of composers and songwriters with specific talents that I liken to a Navy SEAL team,” Sherman says. “I have the one who does the vaudevillian stuff, the one who does the more moderny hip-hop stuff, the country people.” The Power of We script, which specifically called for a song using the words listen, act, unite, brought Jackson to mind.

“I called Chris for two reasons,” Sherman says. “One, he has that voice. Two, he had written lyrics for Sesame Street before, [which] is very difficult. There’s so much critique: grammar police, ethics and moral police, a lot of police. Chris gets that…. In a Sesame Street song, for example, all of the syllables are accounted for. There’s not a lot of held notes because we don’t have the time.” The resulting song, a succinct hybrid of hip-hop and campfire sing-along, checked all the boxes. Sherman believes it has the staying power of other songs in Sesame Street’s canonical rotation, alongside Joe Raposo’s “Sing” and “C Is for Cookie” and Jeff Moss’s “People in Your Neighborhood” and “Rubber Duckie.”  

Tamir too will become a Sesame Street regular. The show does not expand its Muppet roster cavalierly; its last big addition to the core cast came four years ago, when Sesame Street viewers were introduced to the orange-haired, yellow-skinned Julia, an autistic girl—who, at the time, was the Street’s first major new Muppet regular in a decade. But the recent spate of highly visible acts of anti-Black and anti-Asian violence prompted a recognition by the Workshop brass that they could be doing more to counter bigotry. They are executing their vision in signature Sesame Street fashion: through positivity and puppetry. Racial justice will be a curricular pillar of season 53. While those episodes are about a year away from being viewable, on Thanksgiving Day the Workshop is releasing a new PBS special, titled See Us Coming Together, that celebrates Asian-American and Pacific Islander cultures. The program, which will be available via HBO Max and Sesame Workshop’s YouTube and social-media channels, will be anchored by the long-serving human cast member Alan Muraoka, who is Japanese-American, and will introduce viewers to Sesame Street’s first Korean-American character, a Muppet girl named Ji-Young.

“She’s spunky, she’s 7 years old, and she can shred on electric guitar, so we’re going to see her play in the big song at the end,” Wilson Stallings says. (Sherman is working on Ji-Young’s showcase song with the Chinese-American musician and comedian Jen Kwok.) Ji-Young, like Tamir, will live on in the Sesame universe beyond her inaugural appearance. “We don’t want to use these characters only in racial-justice story lines,” Wilson Stallings says. “We want to use them because they’re now part of our Sesame Street worldand community.”

Indeed, one of the most enduring legacies of the original version of Sesame Street is its depiction of an environment where diversity is a given, not a provocation or an abomination. Many adults of color, Wilson Stallings included, describe the show’s lived-in, hustle-bustle street set as the first place in American popular culture where they felt valued and seen. Fifty-two years on, the content-delivery systems have changed, but the need for Sesame Street hasn’t. It is still the aspirational place where the air is sweet—where adults send their children to glimpse a fairer, better, more conscientious world than the one they live in now.

OK, now for a few factoids.

  • Season 52 will feature a story arc on a farm, introducing a new Muppet chicken named Lottie.
  • A Thanksgiving special will introduce a new Korean Muppet named Ji-Young
  • I'm SO excited about Season 52 (OK, that's an opinion. LOl!)
  • Chris Jackson was also on Sunny Side Up

Happy Halloween, Sproutlets!

 


Hope it's a spooky one. It's also the tenth anniversary of the above picture, which I (SURPRISE!) remember watching in its initial broadcast.

Saturday, October 30, 2021

My Week with Halloween

 The scariest day of the year is tomorrow - Halloween. That's right - that's the day where you dress up in fun costumes and eat candy. As part of the My Week series, I focused on Sprout Halloween happenings for an entire week.

Friday, October 29, 2021

My Week with Halloween: A Sweet Goodnight Treat

 


From 2008 to 2011, Sprout aired a special Halloween broadcast of The Good Night Show called A Sweet Goodnight Treat, in which Nina and Star would play dress up games and show viewers' Halloween costumes in addition to doing activities they normally do. From what I have heard, the set was painted orange for these broadcasts.

In 2011, the special was live, so it had to take place on The Sunny Side Up Show set due to the one from The Good Night Show either being non-existent or impractical for live airings. Chica tagged along. In fact, I remember watching the one and only broadcast of this special in 2011.

Thursday, October 28, 2021

My Week with Halloween: Spooktacular

 


In 2006 and 2007, Sprout held Sprout's Halloween Spooktacular, which consisted of Halloween-themed programming and hosted segments from programming blocks. In addition, The Good Night Show would show viewers' costumes. In 2007, a Chica costume contest was held.

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

My Week with Halloween: Tricks, Clicks, and Treats

 


In 2013, Sprout hosted Tricks, Clicks, and Treats. This stunt consisted of Halloween-themed programming of shows like The Chica Show, new games such as My Little Sproutlet, and the popular annual Costume Parade.

In addition, singer Justin Roberts appeared on The Sunny Side Up Show and sang his song "The Princess Wore Pink" to Sean and Chica.

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

My Week with Halloween: Knock-Knock, Who's There?

 I'm! I'm who? I'm here to tell you about something Sprout did in 2016. Ha!

Sprout's Knock Knock Joke Halloween was a series of animated interstitials that aired on Sprout in 2016, written and directed by Marc Cantone and animated by Aaron Stewart.

BONUS! Sprout's Dream Halloween Costume, from the same year, had animated kids explaining their dream Halloween costumes. They were also written and produced by Cantone.

Monday, October 25, 2021

My Week with Halloween: The Song

 This song, "What Will You Be This Halloween?," was written by Sprout's resident Tim Burns and available on his SoundCloud. The song debuted on Sproutonline.com in 2008 on the Music section of The Sprout Sharing Show website. Here are the lyrics:

Will you be cute? Will you be spooky?

Will you be beautiful or kooky?

Will you be Blue, Red, Purple, Pink, or Green?

What Will You Be This Halloween?

When you hit the street in search of candy to eat,

Will all the little Sproutlets shout "Trick or Treat?"

Will you be something that the world has never seen?

What Will You Be? What Will You Be?

What Will You Be This Halloween?

BOO!

Click here to pick a Halloween costume on the Parents and Kids Share Together forum.

Saturday, October 23, 2021

My Week with The Good Night Show

 As part of the My Week series, I focused on The Good Night Show for a week with a series of articles.

Friday, October 22, 2021

My Week with The Good Night Show: Goodnight Games

 


One of the most popular parts of The Good Night Show was the Goodnight Games, in which Nina and Star would play an educational game related to tonight's theme.

The games were also available in online game form on Sproutonline.com.

Thursday, October 21, 2021

My Week with The Good Night Show: Promos

 


This is the promo branding for The Good Night Show during the second generation. It was purple, by a tree with a star, and in the Goodnight Garden. Also used in promos on NBC Kids.

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

My Week with The Good Night Show: Openings

 


Today we're going to take a look at the intros of The Good Night Show over the years.

The first intro, from 2005, had the sun watching a bird fly to its nest. Just then, blankets fly down on the ground, a clock yawns, and a cat in a bed watches the moon rise up by a birthday cake and cage with a moon - the same one from The Birthday Show intro and Sprout Diner theme song. By 2007, it was the same intro, but with an extended soundtrack.

The 2009 intro retained many elements from the first intro - such as the bird in its nest, the blankets on the ground, and the clock yawning, but with new ones, such as the "Sproutlet-constructed" box. A mother reads a book with her son and his teddy bear in his bed, and she opens the box, leading to the animated intro. Aside from the things I mentioned, this intro has a rocket flying to a teddy bear in a bed, hands set Lucies free, and a blanket reveals the logo. The teddy bear was then replaced by the You and Me Tree in 2011. Weird thing is, Nina sang the exact theme song - albeit with different lyrics in the first and final links.

Tuesday, October 19, 2021

My Week with The Good Night Show: Sprout Stretches

 


Another popular part of The Good Night Show was the Sprout Stretches segment, in which Nina would teach her "Sproutlet friends" (real kids on set) a new stretch.

The stretch poem was "I'm a little Sprout now, but just watch me grow. Up, up, up I go. I stand on my tiptoes and reach high through the air. Now I’ve got a Sprout stretch that I’d like to share."

At first, Melanie and later Nina would do the stretches by themselves.

In the third season, Nina would mostly do yoga poses, even though they were still called "stretches."

In the fourth season, Sproutlets joined Nina in stretches, which were often based on Sprout characters. This is probably why this segment was called "Sprout Stretches."

When the main setting was changed to the You and Me Tree in 2011, Nina would still do stretches in the Goodnight Garden, with each segment started by real kids calling her down. Starting with the eighth and final season, the blankets in the garden were removed.

Monday, October 18, 2021

My Week with The Good Night Show: Crafts

 


One of the most popular things about The Good Night Show was the craft segments.

Each segment opened with a song. Melanie had "The Craft Song," Nina and Star had "Let's Make Something New." The former song played instrumentally during crafts, promos, and other segments. 

Beginning with Season 4, Nina and Star would tell stories using their crafts in the penultimate link.

The craft segments were also available in video form with instructions on Sproutonline.com and in the Good Night Show podcast on iTunes.

The craft segments were dropped in 2011 and replaced with "Sandy Stories."

Saturday, October 16, 2021

My Week with Sprout Music

 Sprout's blocks were very musical with a lot of songs, and I focused on the songs all this week. Note that there wasn't a post for Friday as I just didn't feel like it.

Click here to sing along with us on the Parents and Kids Share Together forum.

Friday, October 15, 2021

The Sprout Art of Khalil

Hi, Sproutlets! Sprout fan Khalil, who is an administrator on PBS Kids Sprout TV Wiki, has made pictures of the Sprout Gang, but I deleted them since we don’t allow fan art on there, so I uploaded them and put them here instead. Enjoy!

Errors: Chica has a yellow mohawk(?), Curtis plays the bass, not the sax.

Errors: Miles has girl hair, Banjo doesn't wear a toolbelt, she wears overalls with a yellow note, Carla doesn't look like that and her seat looks like a Dora character.

Kelly's hair and skin isn't colored in

Dennisha looks like a boy, Liz's skin isn't colored in

JB has different foods on her body

I see nothing wrong with this pic, apart from Nina's creepy button eyes.

Noodle doesn't wear a chef's hat, Bunji looks like Garfield or the Lorax from Dr. Seuss.

How can you tell Chica's nana and Mrs. C apart? Mr. C doesn't have his glasses. Besides, Rico has glasses, overalls, and a hat.

Sharon looks like Patty with lipstick and shoes, Otis wears a yellow shirt and I haven't seen him play baseball. Reginald wears a different outfit.

Coo has rainbow feathers. Bean and Alfalfa look like generic cartoon characters.

They're good, but first of all, the people have button-like eyes, which is downright creepy. Second, most of the characters look nothing like themselves (see above).

Click here to wear a toolbelt on the Parents and Kids Share Together forum.

Thursday, October 14, 2021

My Week with Sprout Music: The Sprout Sharing Show

 Music has also been a big part of The Sprout Sharing Show, which makes sense because the block is about a band. Today we're going to take a look at their songs:


This is of course the intro song. It starts with a bunch of kids building a theater from a cardboard box, and Patty shows the logo, leading to the theme song and first show. The song played instrumentally during promos and "we'll be right back" and "welcome back" bumpers (Sproutoramas, anyone?)


This is The Alphabet Song, which needs NO explanation - it's legendary. This snapshot is from the PBS Kids Sprout TV Wiki, which they got from the Sharing Show online promo.


Curtis' "Can't Share Blues" was featured both in continuity links and in tune in promos like this one.


Other songs include "Limbo," "I Love Bread," "Opera," and "I Like to Share With You." "Opera" we have a snapshot of, taken from a video that was taken down from Dailymotion. It was introduced by Ricky's dad Reginald, and was set to "La Donna e Mobile." "I Love Bread" we have the lyrics to.


…and finally we have "the Goodbye Song," the song that played during the final link. That's a wrap, Sproutlets! Thanks for reading!

Click here to introduce an opera about sharing an apple on the Parents and Kids Share Together forum!

Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Weekly Character Wednesdays: Chica

 CHICA


Hi, Sproutlets. Today I launched the Parents and Kids Share Together forum on Delphi, where you can talk about Sprout and other stuff. Anyways, welcome to Weekly Character Wednesdays.

PERFORMED BY:

  • Forrest Harding (squeaks)
  • Ed Pokropski
  • Jenn Santee
  • Brendan Gawell
  • Jackie Payton
  • Kimberly Diaz
  • Scott McClennen
FIRST APPEARANCE:
The Sunny Side Up Show, 2007

MOST RECENT APPEARANCE:
Universal Kids spots, 2019

BEST KNOWN ROLE:
Four and a half year old co-host of The Sunny Side Up Show. Non-talkative squeaker.

WHO IS CHICA?

Chica the Chicken is the Sunny Side Up Show's on-air sidekick. She first appeared when the block launched in Fall 2007, and got her own show, none other than The Chica Show, in 2012. Chica squeaks like a squeaky toy instead of using actual dialog. Why? This is because her performer is an associate producer.


Chica has not only appeared on Sunny and her show, but she also had dolls and backpacks on Sprout and CafePress' Shop Sprout website. In 2008, a Sprout anniversary special focused on Chica celebrating her birthday.


With the Sunny Side Up refresh in 2015, Chica started to play a backseat to the hosts, and started having less screentime, being replaced by the hosts' Sproutlet friends, but she was still pretty popular. She strangely does not appear in the above picture. When Sunny Side Up got replaced by Sprout House/Snug's House in 2017, she still appeared in segments, and appeared in a few spots on Universal Kids once her show returned to the airwaves for a brief period.


Before The Sunny Side Up Show began, senior vice president Andrew Beecham wanted the puppet co-host to be an animal, and Sprout executives (including Betsy Oliphant) contemplated a chicken since the block's title was a reference to sunny side up eggs, even though Beecham didn't think the Sproutlets at home could connect well with chickens.

WHY DOES SPROUT NEED CHICA?

As the hosts' sidekick, Chica represents her preschool viewers. She knows what they see and what they know.

Click here to squeak about it on the Parents and Kids Share Together forum!

200 posts!

 

Note: That's me

That's right, Sproutlets! Today this blog has reached 200 SQUEAKIN' PAGES! It seems like yesterday I started writing about kiddie shows I grew up with. 200 pages is like graduating school or seeing your favorite show return.

I started this blog with my first post in February 2020, and named it after an old Sprout tagline "the only 24-hour preschool channel parents and kids share together." This was because I liked Muppet fansites like ToughPigs and the Muppet Mindset and a Sesame Place blog called Big Bird Bridge, and yet there weren't any Sprout fan blogs on the internet, and I have already started a few blogs under my past Google accounts, but none of my posts on there mentioned Sprout, although I did mention a few Sprout shows. Remember, a few months ago I started uploading Sprout and CBeebies videos on my YouTube channel and discovered PBS Kids Sprout TV Wiki, which I became an admin on and still edit to this day. 

I settled down and I made a blog and watched it grow - time after time I introduced My Week and Weekly Character Wednesdays. Both are based on series from ToughPigs and the Muppet Mindset, respectively. Back then, I copied from other blogs and posted fanfic and false information. Nowadays, I write original stuff and most of them are true information.

Months passed. I abandoned the blog for other stuff (mainly the wiki) and only posted occasionally. All that changed in July, when I introduced the My Week series, inspired by Muppet fansite ToughPigs. Weekly Wednesdays was introduced not long after.


Special thanks to everyone who's read all 200 posts on this blog. Kudos also to everyone who's made Sprout great - especially Melanie Martinez and Hush and Helping Hand and Star and Leo and Lucy and Nina and Kevin Yamada and Mr. Mailman and Brussel and Bean and Alfalfa and Miles and Banjo and Carla the Car and Coo and Elizabeth Balzano and Chica and Kelly Vrooman and Sean Roach and Dennisha Pratt and Liz Filios and Carly Ciarrocchi and Tim Kubart and Kaitlin Becker and Emily Borromeo and Mrs. C and Rico and Chica's nana and Patty and Ricky and Curtis E. Owl and the Stage Mice and Sharon and Reginald and Otis and Sam and Anthony and Jeff and Murray and JB and Captain Feathersword and Dorothy the Dinosaur and Bean and Sportacus and Mayor Meanswell and Meeka and M'Goats and Snug and TJ and Noodle McNoodle and Doodle and Doggity and Lola and Cap'n Tony and Deedelee Dee and Mr. C and Stitches and Bunji and Jett and Apollo and Cowbella and Squacky and Sweetpea Sue and Comet and Halley and Sputnik and Jet and Radar and Sal and Ruff-Ruff and Tweet and Dave and Hatty and Fleeker and Flo and Boomer. Thank yooooooooooou!!!!

My Week with Sprout Music: The Let's Go Show

Music played an important part of The Let's Go Show (Music Hill, anyone?) Today we're going to take a look at a few of its songs. The ones already on YouTube. Most of them I got from Tim Burns' SoundCloud and uploaded them to my own YouTube channel, with a few exceptions.


This one's called "Safari So Goody," sung by Miles and Banjo on a safari bus with a few other exotic animals.


"My Favorite Color is a Rainbow" is, you guessed it, about the colors of the rainbow and why it is Banjo's favorite color. The song was heard instrumentally in a Sprout Vimeo video. Personally, my favorite color is orange.


"Do the You" is a 60s-inspired song sung by Miles.


"Bottom of the Sea" is a reggae-like song sung by Miles about underwater animals.


"To the Moon" is one of the only songs we have a music video of. BION, I uploaded it on the same day I uploaded the audio. This song is sung by both Miles and Banjo about going to the moon.


Our last one is "Teddy Bear Picnic," sung by Miles. According to PBS Kids Sprout TV Wiki, the song continued to be used even after The Let's Go Show was discontinued. It was heard in Barnyard Boogie segments on The Sunny Side Up Show, in the online My Little Sproutlet games, and in a commercial for the Sprout Channel Cubby tablet.

There are a few other songs we don't have audio and/or a music video of. These include "Desert Song," "Fiesta Song," "Hiking Song," "Party Time," "Chillin' with a Polar Bear," "Doin' the Silly Square," "At the Luau," and "The Great Banjodini," though we do have all their lyrics.

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

My Week with Sprout Music: The Good Night Show

 


The Good Night Show has sure had a lot of songs - well, not as many as The Sunny Side Up Show and The Let's Go Show, but still quite a lot. Let's take a look at it today.


Back in the early days with original host Melanie Martinez, the above video contains the song used before craft segments. Hey, guess what? Let's make a craft, OK/what a great way to wrap up the day/And who better to help us out/Than a grownup, or a Big Sprout? An instrumental of the song was often heard, both in links and promos, even after the INFAMOUS Martinez PSA scandal in 2006.


Martinez also created the "Welcome" and "Goodnight" songs, which had the same lyrics, which themselves were also used in the 2009 show opening. We don't have a video of her singing the Welcome Song, but we have one of the Goodnight Song (see above). I wonder if she ever did sing it, did they ever do the good___ thing Nina and Star did. 


According to Tim Burns, 2009 show opening, which was probably the same as the Goodnight Song, was inspired by the Beatles. (source)



This is Leo. He was the guest host in 2006. His actor was previously on a similar show to Good Night. Now, I'm not going to name names - but it was about a bear who lived in a house that was blue, and sang and danced a lot. Back to Leo. His Welcome and Goodnight songs were different from the ones we're familiar with.


"Ready for Bed" was a song that always played in the second-to-last link. Star would sing this song while brushing his teeth and washing his face, accompanied by clips from Sprout shows and blocks and footage of real kids (or should I say Sproutlets).


"Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" is a classic children's song set to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Ah Vous Dirai-je Maman, also used for the Alphabet Song and Baa Baa Black Sheep and using lyrics from a Jane Taylor poem called "The Star." The song, with altered lyrics and a new verse, was sung by Nina and Star during "Sproutoscope" segments. The Sproutoscope was a telescope the duo would look through stars, constellations, and Sproutlets' artwork with shown to them by Lucy the Firefly.


"Let's Make Something New" was a song sung by Nina and Star and used for craft segments. The song, along with the crafts themselves, was dropped in 2011 with the sixth season, although Goodnight Garden season reruns aired until 2012.


Speaking of Season 6, the "Clean Up" song was sung by Nina and Star starting with that season as they would clean up the You and Me Tree.

Monday, October 11, 2021

My Week with Sprout Music: The Sunny Side Up Show

 


Madeline Fretz - Music has played an important part of The Sunny Side Up Show since its launch.

Back then, Sprout had a section of its website and Games and Videos app as well as a TV segment called Sprout Tunes (more on that hopefully). Some of the music videos there have been from Sunny - such as "We Try, We Don't Cry," "Where is Chica?," and "So Many Numbers in the Ocean." I remember the songs distinctively.

Watching TV shows is a great introduction to music for preschoolers, and The Sunny Side Up Show was no exception - music was everywhere. Famous musicians often appear on kids shows, and there have been times where musicians visited Chica and the gang - Elizabeth Balzano of Bounce, Dan Zanes (formerly of the Del Fuegos) and Sonia de los Santos, Elizabeth Mitchell, Lisa Loeb, Justin Roberts, Laurie Berkner, The Wiggles, the Dream Jam Band, the Pop Ups, the Okee Dokee Brothers, Lucky Diaz, Walter Martin of the Walkmen, Jake Shimabukuro, Timothy Bloom, Megan Nicole, The American Authors, OK Go, Boyz II Men, Faith Evans, Mel B (Scary Spice of the Spice Girls), Postmodern Jukebox, Pentatonix, LeAnn Rimes, Jennifer Nettles, Justin Timberlake, Jordan Smith, Demi Lovato, Maren Morris, Jack Black, Steve from Blue's Clues, the Joyous String Ensemble, America's Sweethearts, Manhattan Dolls, Christopher Jackson, Ruth B, Harry Connick Jr. All musicians have appeared on The Sunny Side Up Show or its later incarnation as Sunny Side Up

Music was used on The Sunny Side Up Show almost every day, making it a great introduction to music for a lot of kids, including myself. Once children heard the theme song, they knew a musical world was waiting for them.

Sunday, October 10, 2021

Launch Day?

 

Image from Instagram

Madeline Fretz - Along with Facebook and old YouTube videos, Instagram is one of my go-tos for rare Sprout content from more than five years ago. A few days ago and yesterday, I was surfing through old Sprout photos on people's Instagram accounts (presumably to upload them to PBS Kids Sprout TV Wiki, which I'm an admin on), and stumbled across this interesting picture from funkbunny77 (Sprout's Laura Kelly).

The picture was from September 27, 2012, and the caption reads "seven years ago yesterday," which makes it obviously from September 26, 2005, Sprout's cable channel launch day. Could this the control room from Sprout's launch day? We don't know. You better ask or contact Laura. If I ever find out, I'll upload it to the wiki for all to see. Peace out!

Image from Instagram

Speaking of Sprout's launch, I also found this picture from the same account, which is OBVIOUSLY from a launch party The Good Night Show's Melanie Martinez was present at.

Saturday, October 9, 2021

Sprout Farms Ketchup

 

Image from Instagram
Who loves ketchup? Let's see - you love ketchup, I love ketchup, who else? The Sprout people love ketchup?!

It's true! Apparently there was a prop for "Sprout Farms Ketchup" that was obviously for The Sunny Side Up Show. Was it for a recipe segment or something? Hmm… Anyways, this picture was from ten years ago and I'm guessing it was first used back then.

My Week with 2009

 We all know Sprout rebranded in the year 2009, but there was so much more happening that year. As part of the "My Week with" series, I focused on Sprout 2009 happenings.

Friday, October 8, 2021

My Week with 2009: Summer Adventures

 

The year is 2009. In that year, Sprout teamed up with the Smart Television Alliance for online content and a contest throughout the summer. 

Sprout's Smart Summer was a section of Sproutonline.com that featured crafts and activities from The Sunny Side Up Show, The Good Night Show, and The Let's Go Show. In addition, a contest was held.


In Mr. Mailman's Summer Adventure Contest, Sproutlets were encouraged to take a cutout of Mr. Mailman on a trip with them, and "Big Sprouts" had the task of uploading a picture of the trip to Sproutonline.com. The lucky winner would guest star on The Sunny Side Up Show and receive tickets to the Please Touch Museum and Sesame Place, both in Pennsylvania.


The winner ended up being Ian Piet.

Thursday, October 7, 2021

Sunny Side Update

 


When Sprout rebranded for its tenth anniversary on September 26th, 2015, it not only introduced Nina's World, but The Sunny Side Up Show became Sunny Side Up as it moved from the Sunshine Barn to a city apartment set. I talked about this in two previous posts on this blog.


There's a lot I both do and don't understand. We all know the touch screen is there because kids love touch screens and the setting change and birthday song update were nice touches, but I have a few other questions. Where do the stairs on set lead to? Why did they have to change the name? Why were most of the segments dropped (i.e. Sproutlet Stories)?


I also have a question about THIS picture of the hosts with the logo. WHERE IS CHICA? Seriously, SSU is NOTHING without her! Anyways, that's enough ranting. (phew!)

Getting Dressed

 


One year (2011 I'm guessing), Sprout and Aquafresh collaborated for two jingles to air in between program breaks on the Sprout channel. One I'll get to later, the other I'm talking about tonight.

This one is about Getting Dressed, sung to Sunny Side Up Show production music. The song features Sproutlets getting ready for the day by doing - what else - getting dressed. *sigh* I love Sprout ads like this!

Here are the lyrics:

Can you button those buttons? (yes I can!)

Can you zip your zip? (yes I can!)

Are your runners set for running, and your slippers will not slip (no way!)

Wear a smile, show the world your style, you always look your best.

Look at you, you're getting dressed!

Well I'm so impressed! You're getting dressed!

My Week with 2009: Fire Prevention Week

 


September was Fire Prevention Month, which I missed a mark on, but still mentioned in a post. Sprout celebrated Fire Prevention Month with a week on fire safety on The Sunny Side Up Show all the way back in 2009, which was probably a little while after the network rebrand.

I'm guessing this picture was from that week.

The week was hosted by Kevin Yamada (during his last few Sunny hosting months) and Chica, with special guests firefighter Dayna Hilton and Sparkles the Fire Safety Dog, who I mentioned in the aforementioned Sprout birthday post, and the CGI episodes of Fireman Sam commenced. Previously, only the stop-motion episodes of said show aired on Sprout.



Hilton and Sparkles also hosted fire safety tips sponsored by State Farm (the videos are from 2010, but whatever).

Anyways, for Sprout this was a great start to airing new episodes of Fireman Sam! Though the Sproutlets probably wouldn't notice the animation change… The Sam CGI episodes aired until May 11, 2014, the day The Sprout Sharing Show dissolved and a day before Lily's Driftwood Bay premiered.

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

Weekly Character Wednesdays: Banjo

 


BANJO

PERFORMED BY:

Ali Eisner

FIRST APPEARANCE:

The Let's Go Show (2007)

BEST KNOWN ROLE:

Banjo player, preschool doppelgänger

WHO IS BANJO? The co-host of The Let's Go Show, Banjo is a pink dog puppet played by Ali Eisner. She is very spunky and loves to play the banjo, hence her name. The puppet was recycled, albeit with altered features, as Meeka on Sprout Control Room in 2014.

WHY DOES THE LET'S GO SHOW NEED BANJO? Banjo represents the age and humor of the preschool viewers at home.

My Week with 2009: Trace Pictures

 


Madeline Fretz - With the Sprout rebrand in 2009, there were some network rebrand pitches (including this one), but the company who made the final idents and openings was Trace Pictures. 

Trace's Sprout work includes the Cloud ident, the Tree opening, the Pinwheel opening, the Rain ident, the Bubble ident, and the openings to Sprout's programming blocks as well as ¡Hola Sproutitos!.

Tuesday, October 5, 2021

My Week with 2009: Mama Mirabelle's Home Movies

 

In January 2009, Sprout introduced Mama Mirabelle's Home Movies, a British animated animal show from PBS. The show aired during The Sprout Sharing Show, but the Sprout airings cut out the "Monkey Minutes" segments. The main character was voiced by Baroness Floella Benjamin in the UK and Vanessa Williams in the US, attracting many adult viewers.

The show later aired on The Good Night Show in 2010, replacing Dragon Tales. It aired on Sprout until October 2012.


Sprout YouTube channel URL changed

 

Madeline Fretz - Sprout became Universal Kids in 2017, and its YouTube channel became Universal Kids Preschool after a while, and once again became Peacock Jr. when the Peacock streaming service launched. Even with those channel changes, its URL hasn't changed a bit. Until now.

Apparently, according to a user on Discord's Sprout fan server, the Sprout channel's URL has been changed to PeacockJr. The Sprout URL, like I said earlier, has been there for years, even after the Universal Kids switchover.

Anyways, despite this, some Sprout videos are still up on the Peacock Jr. YouTube channel … for now. They might become private or get deleted someday. A few months ago, the Peacock Jr. channel has made some Sunny Side Up Show videos private. Don’t despair, some of us may reupload them.

Monday, October 4, 2021

My Week with 2009: The Mighty Jungle

 

For Earth Day 2009, a new puppet show called The Mighty Jungle came to Sprout. The program started a meerkat named Babu, a rhinoceros named Rhonda, and a gorilla named Bruce, whose stories real kids would tell. The show premiered for "Mighty Earth Week," and a giveaway was held.


After that, the show aired daily during Sprout's Wiggly Waffle, The Sprout Sharing Show, and The Super Sproutlet Show. It left the channel in 2015, along with Justin Time.

Sunday, October 3, 2021

William Shatner

William Shatner is a Canadian character actor perhaps best known for his role as Captain Kirk in the Star Trek franchise.

For many Sprout fans, their first exposure of Shatner was seeing him narrate Clangers, which aired on Sprout from 2015 to 2017. The original UK version was narrated by Michael Palin of Monty Python's Flying Circus fame.


To promote Clangers, Shatner appeared on The Sunny Side Up Show twice - once for a Sprout Today segment, another for a segment where Carly Ciarrocchi and Chica show him viewers' drawings asking if those are the Clangers.

Image from Vimeo

Shatner also hosted the "Clangers Imagine" spots to promote the show.