Netflix and PBS have announced new deals with Sesame Workshop that will see new episodes of “Sesame Street” stream on Netflix and air on PBS Kids.

The deals came amid concerns over the future of “Sesame Street” following cutbacks to public media funding and the end of an output deal with Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max streaming service that had been airing new episodes along with PBS.

Unlike the Max deal, the new agreements call for new episodes to air on PBS stations the same day they start streaming on Netflix.

In announcing the deal, Netflix said the program “is coming to Netflix later this year, with ‘Sesame Street’s’ all-new, reimagined 56th season — plus 90 hours of previous episodes from previous seasons — available to audiences worldwide.”

The streamer also promised notable changes to the show. “The new season will feature fresh format changes and the return of fan-favorite segments like Elmo’s World and Cookie Monster’s Foodie Truck,” Netflix said. “Expect new ways to play along as Cookie Monster opens his very own Cookie Cart on Sesame Street, and explore Abby’s Fairy Garden, a home to surprising and delightful magical creatures.”

PBS said the new deal for “Sesame Street” will include these features:

• New episodes will be released on PBS stations, the PBS Kids Channel, and across PBS Kids digital platforms.
• An expanded collection of 25 new and library episodes will be available to stream across PBS Kids digital platforms. New episodes will also be available on Netflix the same day.
• New games will be added to the growing library of 25-plus “Sesame Street” games available on pbskids.org and the PBS Kids Games app.
• Full episodes and clips will be available on the PBS Kids YouTube Channel.
• Sesame Workshop and PBS Kids will expand the existing library of parent and educator resources on PBS Kids for Parents and PBS LearningMedia.
• An evergreen toolkit of “Sesame Street’-related assets will be available to PBS stations to support their local sustainability and public service efforts.

“I strongly believe that our educational programming for children is one of the most important aspects of our service to the American people, and ‘Sesame Street’ has been an integral part of that critical work for more than half a century,” said Paula Kerger, president and CEO, PBS. “We’re proud to continue our partnership in the pursuit of having a profound impact on the lives of children for years to come.”

With support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and PBS, this partnership ensures PBS’s ability to continue making this programming and providing it for free and without commercials the same day as the episodes become available on Netflix the same day, the networks aid.

“This unique public-private partnership ensures children in communities across the U.S. continue to have free access on PBS Kids to the Sesame Street they love,” said Sherrie Westin, CEO, Sesame Workshop. “This combined support advances our mission and ensures we can help all children—everywhere—grow smarter, stronger, and kinder.

BOSTON—Big Bird, Elmo, Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch and the rest of the Muppets have lived on “Sesame Street” for the past 50 years, teaching children—and even some adults—valuable lessons on things like spelling, math and social and cultural issues. However, unlike the memorable title song asks, you can’t actually get to Sesame Street. But if you head to Boston or Washington, D.C., you can find these classic episodes readily available.

As part of its 50th anniversary celebration, Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit education workshop behind “Sesame Street,” has donated nearly 4,500 digital copies of episodes from its run, from its premiere in 1969 to its most recent episodes, to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, a collaboration between the Library of Congress and the WGBH Educational Foundation.

Though the episodes have already been digitized, the archiving of these episodes by the AAPB so that they can be around for generations to come is a diligent process.

According to Rachel Curtis, the digital project specialist at the Library of Congress’ Packard Campus in Culpeper, Va., and project coordinator for the AAPB, after Sesame Workshop digitizes the episodes in-house, they send them to her via hard drives in batches covering 10 seasons from the show each. The files from the most recent seasons are in HD, with earlier episodes in SD.

Curtis takes the original files and creates a lower resolution access file so they can be sent to WGBH. The Library of Congress uses its own Packard Campus Workflow Application to convert the files to MP4s with an H.264 codec. The SD episodes come out to a bitrate of about 711 kbps, while the HD episodes are 1.5 mbps. The process of creating an access file, per Curtis, takes about 15 minutes. Those files are then transferred to WGBH via FTP.

“The first batch we received I’m just about finished with my testing and making sure all my scripts are working,” says Curtis. “... [O]nce all the kinks are worked out, it should move pretty quickly.”

In addition, the original files from Sesame Workshop are ingested into the Library of Congress’ own archive so they are available there in perpetuity.

When the files arrive at WGBH that’s when Casey Davis Kaufman, associate director of the WGBH media library and project manager for the AAPB, takes over. Her first task is to ingest the metadata, which she says can take from a few hours to a couple of days depending on how it complies with WGBH’s data model. The files are ingested through a Hyrax Avalon archival management system (AMS) that supports public broadcasting metadata standards.

To be able to find the episodes in WGBH’s system, an API pulls the metadata through the station’s platform so that it is searchable by keyword or series title.

“Once we get the first batch delivered from Rachel, we will go ahead and ingest that batch and make it available on site,” says Kaufman. “We’re thinking within the next six to eight weeks the first batch will be available for anyone who visits the Library or WGBH.”

The “Sesame Street” episodes—which include classic moments like “Farewell, Mr. Hooper,” “Rubber Duckie, You’re the One,” “Near/Far,” and Cookie Monster’s Monsterpiece Theater—will join more than 100,000 digitized items that the AAPB has amassed since 2013. Among those is footage from the Senate Watergate hearings, more than 8,000 episodes of “PBS NewsHour” and raw interviews from numerous documentaries on topics that range from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement. There is also archived materials from PBS’s predecessor, National Educational Television.

About 45,000 items from the archive are available to anyone throughout the country via AAPB’s online reading room. Though at this time, the “Sesame Street” collection will only be available by visiting the Library of Congress and by appointment at WGBH.

Here's a highlight reel of classic "Sesame Street" episodes that will be archived during this process:

Photos courtesy of Sesame Workshop

AMSTERDAM--IBC Show officials reported attendance at the 2018 event of 55,884, a 3 percent decline from the 2017 show that attracted 57,699. The exhibit floor grew by 667 square meters (7,180 square feet) and conference delegates were up by 14 percent from 2017. The organization, which marked its 51st event, said noted that diversity of its content had improved with the number of women speakers at the conference up from 14 percent in 2017 to 37 percent.

The IBC International Honour for Excellence was awarded to its first-ever woman recipient this year: Joan Ganz Cooney, co-creator of Sesame Street, 50 years ago. Ernie the muppet accepted the trophy on her behalf. The IBC App logged more than 91,000 interactions and IBC itself trended number one on Twitter in the Netherlands on several days of the convention, with 185 million potential impressions and over 250,000 video views, according to show organizers. Engagement with IBC has also increased on a year-round basis with IBC365 – the site now has over 55,000 subscribers averaging 49,000 active users per month.

Apart from attendance, IBC CEO Michael Crimp noted that the show stats “are up in almost all areas and re-bookings are ahead of last year. IBC is much more than a trade show, we have developed a basket of data-driven statistics including sales leads generated on stands, conference attendance and IBC365 views and this sharing of information is pivotal to the longevity of IBC’s success and sits at the core of the organisation.”

New initiatives this year included a new content steering group, drawn from across the industry, and chaired by Keith Underwood, Chief Operating Officer at Channel 4 in the UK.

IBC head of content Jaisica Lapsiwala, said, “This year, we have worked closely with the industry to create a programme that is not only reflective of the changes in the ecosystem, but which also paves a path forward for our industry. This has resulted in an engaging and diverse 2018 edition of IBC. An example of this was our Global Gamechangers day which brought creative, technology and business chiefs such as Zahra Rasool from Al Jazeera, Peter Salmon from Endemol and Lindsay Pattison from WPP to the stage. Threaded through the programme were the cutting-edge technologies transforming the industry. Blockchain is a great example, with a keynote from Kim Jackson of Singular DTV and papers from people who are already implementing it, like Éric Minoli of Groupe Média TFO.”

IBC2019 will run Sept. 12-17 in Amsterdam.