While Sesame Street searches for a new streaming home, after Warner Bros. Discovery opted not to renew its contract with the long-running children’s series, the nonprofit behind the series is laying off staff.
“Amid the changing media and funding landscape, we have made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our organization,” a spokesperson for Sesame Workshop told The Hollywood Reporter. “These changes are necessary to ensure that the Workshop is poised to continue to deliver on its mission for years to come, but that does not make the human impact of these reductions any less painful. As production of our 56th Season begins next month, we remain as committed as ever to bringing Sesame Street to children and families for decades to come.”
With Season 56 starting production soon, the company is facing financial obstacles. Sesame Workshop’s CEO announced the layoffs in a note to staff, saying that “Sesame Workshop is not immune to the current economic challenges inherent to the drastically changing media landscape.”
The number of staff impacted by the layoffs was not shared.
Previously, we learned that Sesame Street will move away from its “magazine” format of showing short segments for Season 56, to expand the show to two eleven-minute stories, with Tales From 123 airing as an intermission between segments. In 2016, the show switched from its hour long format to 30 minutes.