Sesame Street in the UK

I'm sure a good chunk of you will have memories of Sesame Street: be it on ITV, Channel 4, through VHS tapes, or maybe on digital satellite through Nick. Jr UK. My experience with the show came from the UK releases by Disney of US Sesame Street Home Video tapes in the late 90's, specifically; Do the Alphabet/Getting Ready to Read and Learning to Share, both from my Nan's house.

Two segments I remember the most are HEN/PEN/TEN/MEN, and the one involving Cookie Monster and the word FOOD in Styrofoam letters:



It surprises how my region, Granada, were among the first ITV franchises to air the series on July 8th, 1972, even then it took nearly thirteen years into the show's existence to appear nationwide, (not counting Channel who broadcast it for a VERY short time in 1986), before the IBA moved it to Channel 4 at the end of November 1987.

I also remember the subsequent spin-offs even more so, such as Elmo's World on Channel 5's Milkshake! strand, and even the BBC Northern Ireland co-production, Sesame Tree:


Anyone else got their own memories to share?

First ever episode of Sesame Street from 1969 is here:


But that aside, the ITA, the BBC and ITV didn't really like the show, so its surprising it ended up on air at all in some ways.

It wasn’t really a thing here, was it? I have no memories of watching it growing up.

If you saw it depended on where you were in the UK. LWT aired it Saturday mornings in the mid 1970s, can't find anything that says Thames ever aired it while they were broadcasting. Yorkshire and Tyne Tees didn't see the show until the 1980s.

It certainly AFAIK never appeared in any "peak" children's slot like CBBC or CITV - indeed Sesame Tree was the first the BBC had anything to do with it, and even for UK wide airings that was dumped on CBeebies.

I have no doubt it was universally popular in the US and remains so 50 years on, but I must admit more of my exposure to it is through the various lampoons that the likes of Family Guy do as opposed to anything that was shown over here.

It was on Channel 4 in the very early 90s as I was on half days in primary school and I remember watching it at around lunchtime



I loved it, but maybe I'm older than you lot

I remember the trouble the CTW faced in 1970 when they tried (and failed) to persuade the BBC to air the series in Britain, it and the head of Children's Programming, Monica Sims, accused the show of "indoctrinating" children with advertising techniques and being "authoritarian" with it's teaching techniques. The irony being that the BBC went on to create You and Me, which was heavily inspired by it.


I believe the series also influenced Thames to create Rainbow in 1972, which was more akin to Play School, except with the puppet characters, Zippy, George and Bungle, (not sure if they ever aired the series, as it was usually broadcast on Saturday mornings in London by LWT, usually before Tiswas from 1974-82).

As I was born shortly after the turn of the millennium, I was too young to remember Sesame Street on Channel 4, as they stopped airing it after September 22nd, 2001, which at the point was moved from it's weekday lunchtime slot, to Saturday mornings, as it had been on various ITV networks in the 70's and early 80's.

I do, however, remember very fondly The Hoobs, which ended up being its replacement as it was a UK production by The Jim Henson Company, and continued to be repeated on 4 until February 2014. Not to mention it had a great soundtrack, courtesy of Blockbusters composer, Ed Welch:

I don't know if you've seen this or not but Applemask made this on Seseme Street. Its a great insight (IMHO) on how the series had a bad journey to British TV:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu__w2bv7So

It's just one of those shows that we "don't quite get". Rainbow was probably the closest equivalent, but at least the initial puppet for Big Bird wasn't as a scary as hell as the first Bungle was...

Yes, I've seen it, there were a few factual errors Matthew made, (saying HTV premiered the series in April instead of March of 1971, ATV airing it from July 1977, when it was actually on June 3rd, along with Border, the next year), here's the list of the premiere dates the series made on the various ITV franchises:


HTV - March 22nd, 1971
LWT and Grampian - September 25th, 1971 (Grampian stopped airing it after the first run until July 1978, LWT stopped in August 1973, before bringing it back on October 15th, 1977).
Granada - July 8th, 1972
UTV - January 6th, 1973
Westward Television - May 1973 (originally on Sundays, before moving to Saturdays in summer 1974)
Southern Television - November 19th, 1977
ATV and Border - June 3rd, 1978
STV - March 16th, 1979
Anglia Television - July 1981
Yorkshire and Tyne Tees - March 29th, 1982
Channel Television - 1986

Are your facts gospel or have you just copied and pasted from Wikipedia?

No, because even the Wikipedia article about the show's history here got dates wrong, I've been researching this for a while through various sources.

You're not alone DJ Dave, I grew up watching it in the 90s too!