Sesame Street

Genre

Educational

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Intended Audience

2+

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Live vs. Animated?

Both

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Episodes Evaluated

"Elmo and Rosita's Tallest Block Tower Ever"

“Sesame Street Circus”

“Cinderella’s Clockworks”

Sesame Street was found to be a relatively slow-paced show, with an average of 9.47 cuts/minute across the three episodes viewed, putting the show at 8th slowest of the ten that were evaluated.

While parts of Sesame Street included live action with live human actors, the use of puppetry for fantastical puppet monsters throughout the show contributed to the show’s mid-high fantasy level (mean of 17.67 incidents/episode of 0.69 incidents/minute). Moreover, animated segments of the show, primarily “Elmo’s Wonderful World” and “Abby’s Amazing Adventures,” contained high levels of fantasy such as magic transformations and appearances/disappearances of characters.

Violence was rarely present in Sesame Street - in fact, across the 3 episodes viewed, only one incident of violence was noted, in which two puppet monsters fought over who could be the clown in “Sesame Circus.” This meant that Sesame Street had a mean violence of 0.01 incidents/minute.

Sesame Street was highly prosocial, containing a mean of 20.67 prosocial behaviors/episode or 0.81 prosocial behaviors/minute which made it the show with the highest prosocial levels of the ten evaluated. Prosocial behaviors incorporated throughout the show included characters encouraging each other to persevere and comforting each other in the face of hardships. Characters were also often depicted helping one another and working together to solve problems that came up throughout the show.

As the only show with interactive elements, Sesame Street, was ranked first in this category, displaying an average 13.33 incidents/episode or 0.52 incidents/minute. While the show wasn’t interactive in the sense of touch-screen games or apps, it did incorporate multiple instances of characters directly addressing the audience and instructing children to perform actions like counting, guessing, and solving problems (e.g. finding missing pieces in a puzzle).