Thread by @AlexandraErin

So a thing about HBO paywalling Sesame Street that jumps out at me is the idea of using the characters to develop more entertainment, including late night shows geared for adults:

HBO is trying to hack its own Muppets franchise out of the Sesame Street Muppets.

Disney+ is going to have Muppets, but 21st attempts to leverage the Muppet franchise have basically shown there is an enduring hunger for Muppet content but it's proven difficult to actually pull it off.

Meanwhile, the Sesame Street Muppets and Elmo in particular have had a persistent, ongoing pop culture presence with merchandise, viral movie parody videos, etc. They're familiar to both children and adults with children in a way that's far less nostalgia-tinged.

So while there are worse things about Sesame Street going ever more commercial than the implications for the family of Muppetdom... this is going to mean bad things for any future cooperation; e.g., new Sesame Street appearances by Kermit, or any old school movie cameos.

We may even see renewed clash over Sesame's use of the "Muppet" term, if HBO tries to use it in branding for shows. Sesame hasn't really leaned on it for promotional purposes, as much because they want their brand to stand on its own, but if HBO wants to try to undercut Disney+?

Anyway. This was probably where they were heading from the moment HBO took over Sesame Street, but I do think the time it's happening and the way in which it's happening is due to the streaming wars heating up.

One more thing to add: at the point when Jim Henson made his first deal with Children's Television Workshop, he kept ownership of the Sesame Street Muppets and an equal split of revenues with the non-profit CTW.

So HBO being a for-profit entity isn't the problem here.

Jim Henson was not running a charity. The Sesame Street Muppets were a potential profit driver from their inception.

But Henson had goals beyond making money. He had principles driving his involvement in children's television.

It's not seeking profit from your creativity and labor that corrodes morality. It's the idea that profit is the highest or only good, that if whatever you're doing can be packaged in a way that wrings more money out of it, then that's obviously what you're suppoed to do.

E.g., if you can figure out a way to make the workplace more efficient in a way that hurts nobody and nothing... yes, great! More profit for less work. Whatever inefficiency you remove probably caused additional problems, anyway.

But if you then start looking around for that next hit of efficiency and decide, "If we stop doing some of the more low-percentage safety checks and provide less service to our customers, we only need to pay eight people instead of twelve and we'll get more money."... eesh.

Basically, if your "improvement" increases profits at the cost of... whatever it was you actually set out to do in the first place... then you're lost.

Anyway. I'm concerned about the future of Sesame Street and what this heralds for the larger Muppet family.

And real quick before anyone reads the preceding and decides I am confused about who owns the Muppets or what Muppets are or whatever and tries to reassuring school me, let me just stop you right there because theonion.com/i-appreciate-t…