I was watching Sesame Street with my daughter. At the very end of the opening sequence, Grover holds up a sign “4007”. Could they really be on the 4000+ episode? My wife argues they started in 1968, and this works out to about 120 episodes per season…sounds high to me. Could they make 120 episodes a year? What’s a typical TV show nowadays? <40?
For comparison, I understand one season of a typ. Disney Afternoon cartoon is 65 episodes. This represents 1/4 of a calendar year (minus the weekends). If this has any significance, I don’t know for sure…I just figured this out by playing with some numbers.
Sesame Street made its debut in 1969. They run five episodes a week.
5 episodes a week times 52 weeks equals 260 episodes.
They’ve been making episodes for 33 years. 260 episodes times 33 years equals 8580 episodes. So I would guess that they have only been making 26 weeks’ worth of episodes every year (or 130 episodes), instead of 52, which sounds about right.
TV shows used to routinely produce episodes in 13- or 26-week batches, you know. This business of running only two or three episodes and then canceling the show, or of only ordering, say, nine episodes of a show, is relatively new in the television industry.
SS (:D) debuted November 10, 1969 to be exact. I have no doubts that they are well over 4k in episodes. Duck Duck Goose explination sounds like a bulls eye.
BTW, did you know Oscar the Grouch was COLOR=orange]Orange[/COLOR] the first season?
Don’t forget that a lot of material in each episode is redundant. Those cartoons, song sequences, Muppet News Flashes, and such appear in several episodes. It’s not like they’ve done 4000+ hours of completely original stuff.
Not that I’m complaining; the way they do it makes perfect sense. Can you imagine having to put together 308 completely original half-hour shows on the letter V?
I actually saw an episode where an orange Grouch visited Oscar. He was an old friend from the neighborhood that had moved out and had come back for a visit. He was a neat freak and couldn’t believe Oscar was living in a garbage can.
I actually have a video taped copy of the very first episode of SS.
Gordon tells you he’s a school teacher and he goes around introducing everyone. Oscar was orange and a little more gruff looking. Look! I read somewhere about why they changed him to green, but I don’t remember the exact explination.
Big Bird had a very small, skinny head, and he acted like he was retarded. They changed that too, because he acted a little too retarded.
Ernie and Bert looked like heroin addicts or something. their hair was all mucked up.
I show this video to grown adults and they’re delighted. It’s so different.
