Sesame Street in the UK

Sesame Street was a big part of my life and my brothers' lives growing up, both the lunchtime edition and the 6am edition.

I think Channel 4 pulled the lunchtime edition around 98/99 which led to my parents subscribing to the Disney Channel so my little brother could carry on watching. I think they carried on broadcasting for a fair few years after Channel 4 gave up with it completely.

The programme had a brief run on Cartoonito a few years ago, and very occasionally a few episodes appear on Now TV (and I presume Sky Box Sets), last time I saw any was about September last year. Weirdly these appear under the 'Cartoonito' channel despite that channel not having any scheduled for years, I guess they might have been burning off some rights.

It's a wonderful little show, despite its Americanisms, and it's a shame it doesn't get wider exposure over here.

I believe the ITV network stopped airing after either the second or third week of January 1987, as I've checked TV Times listings from the end of the month and don't see any mention of it, it went on a ten month hiatus before moving to Channel 4 at the end of November, starting with Season 18.

A colleague of mine tells a story about moving from London to Norwich in the late 1970s, and trying to ingratiate himself with his new primary school classmates with his Sesame Street impressions, which had evidently been a big hit in his previous school.

Unfortunately, Anglia didn't yet show it so they were all rather nonplussed!

We know that Channel 4 began with Season 18, but have we any idea what seasons the ITV regions showed? As it was generally only shown during the school holidays, or initially once a week, I can’t imagine they acquired or showed many seasons at all.

That said, I’m not sure how many episodes were actually produced, as a season in the US typically consisted of a combination of new episodes and repeats.

Well, I imagine HTV started with Season 1, as Season 2 was still airing in the US until May 1971, not sure what LWT and Grampian started with as they started airing it in September; (Grampian dropped it after the first test run until 1978) and Granada picked it up in July 1972.

Sesame Street began on HTV at 13.45 on Monday 29 March 1971.

HTV must have produced a press release about the forthcoming series as The Central Somerset Gazette (26 March 1971) carried a couple of paragraphs:

“Sesame Street, the educational programme for pre-school children that has enjoyed a huge success in America is to be screened experimentally by HTV. For a two-week period from March 29 we televise hour-long editions of the programme each weekday at 1.45. Sesame Street is unlike any other educational programme for children. It makes extensive use of cartoons, puppets and snappy humour reminiscent of the Rowan & Martin Laugh-In”

Why was Sesame Street never popular in the UK? Elmo is well known. It seems to be more well known in popular culture than being an actual popular series on TV in the UK.

Read the rest of the thread if you haven't done so already.
In a nutshell ITV and the regulator didn't much care for it and any airings of it were initially "test".

As being better known, well its being referenced in other American media for a start which is aired over here, plus everybody's heard of the better known characters like Big Bird and Cookie Monster, both of which have b been lampooned in satire like Family Guy for example, which is (or was when it was on BBC Three) relatively popular over here, not sure how it's standing up on ITV2.

It's one of those programmes where it's better known than it was actually watched. Even for those of us who were the correct age when it was on ITV and there was very little else on I don't think it was that popular.

I remember always finding it a very odd programme as a young child, which would have been the very late 70s/early 80s. It looked odd - washed out film and NTSC and it sounded odd - jazzy and funky at a funny tempo, plus you couldn't really relate to much if it. It was produced to teach kids using techniques and styles used in American TV, we were used to 70s British TV. I'm not sure if it was edited for the UK but the structure never made sense and of course there were loads I references in it that we didn't understand, for example the thing at the end 'Sesame Street was brought to you today by the letters... ' I was in my 30s before I realised what that was about

This was how I would have seen it and it partly explains why I found it so weird - the test pattern, then the slides, the mentions of transmitters, and the music, then that seemingly random number at the start. It felt like some sort of secret broadcast


Then there were the episodes that seemed to have a credit sequence that lasted 5 minutes. It's a long way from Cbeebies

According to the handy caption on the video I posted above, LWT were showing season 10 in 1982.


I only associate it with LWT, did Thames ever show it? Presumably once TVam started and Saturday morning kids shows loved to the regular time of 9:25 it must have become Sunday only? Or did LWT just drop it?

As I think I said further up the thread, I doubt Thames ever had anything to do with it. It's most probably an LWT only offering as far as London goes.

Sometimes I think Thames thought it was "posher" than LWT (some of the YouTube handovers between the companies go from a nice polished relax style from Thames into a brash "in-your-face" trailer or (in later years) the cold opener at LWT) so it's probably safe to assume Thames wouldn't have touched Sesame Street with a barge pole unless the regulator flexed the muscles...

Thames was the BBC of the ITV franchises and UK commercial television before Channel 4, (helps both were based in London), it's no surprise as they created Rainbow in 1972, more akin to Play School with the studio setup and a single human presenter, while including puppet characters, Zippy, Bungle, and eventually, George, as well animations produced by Cosgrove Hall Productions (originally known as Stop-Frame Productions) in the exact same manner of Sesame Street.


Not to mention: Thames and LWT's relationship was always very turbulent, more so for LWT who didn't acknowledge their weekday counterparts very often, to the point they didn't carry a lot of the same programming, unlike Carlton, who shared the same broadcasting facilities at The London Studios, created a joint-venture in London News Network and owned a stake in GMTV, until Granada bought LWT in February 1994.