Sesame Street? (November 10, 1969)

Sesame Street is an American educational children’s television series that combines live-action, sketch comedy, animation and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop (known as the Children’s Television Workshop [CTW] until June 2000) and was created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett. It is known for its images communicated through the use of Jim Henson’s Muppets, and includes short films, with humor and cultural references. It premiered on November 10, 1969 to positive reviews, some controversy, and high viewership. It has aired on the US’s national public television provider PBS since its debut, with its first run moving to premium channel HBO on January 16, 2016, then its sister streaming service HBO Max in 2020.

The show’s format consists of a combination of commercial television production elements and techniques which have evolved to reflect changes in American culture and audiences’ viewing habits. It was the first children’s TV show to use educational goals and a curriculum to shape its content, and the first show whose educational effects were formally studied. Its format and content have undergone significant changes to reflect changes to its curriculum.

Wikipedia

Because Malcolm Gladwell references Sesame Street in his chapter on ‘The Stickiness Factor’ in his book “The Tipping Point”, I thought it might be interesting to look at the children’s TV show phenomenon from a different perspective, astrology.

Interesting. That Scorpio setup, starting with Mercury on the 11th House cusp (of groups and associations) seems to demonstrate clearly that this television program had a built-in secret agenda. The Ascendant @ 27° Sagittarius 17′ hints at the star Acumen which is just 18′ later.

Definition of acumen

: keenness and depth of perception, discernment, or discrimination especially in practical matters

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Ah, so. They say that watching too much television may cause blindness, which is the direct contradiction of the intent of the creators of Sesame Street. Maybe, knowing that children will watch just about anything on TV, they thought that teaching them at the same time would benefit the country.

There is one inconjunct:

Saturn Inconjunct Uranus

If either of these planets is near conjunction or opposition with the Ascendant or Midheaven, this aspect indicates a serious tension in your life between freedom and restriction. Many people have this conflict, but in your case the tensions may be so severe that you express them physically as muscle tension and possibly nervousness. You feel that somehow you must keep everything in your life under tight control, that if you let go, the whole structure will fall apart. In a very real and direct sense, even while you are young, you must learn to relax.

On the positive side, if you can learn to live with this tension a bit and express your feelings and emotions before they reach the breaking point, you can be extremely patient and persistent. You will be able to accomplish many tasks that others would give up on, if you do not hold in all your feelings and desires for freedom.

So, the question is: was this aspect about the producers of the TV show or their audience of children?

Sesame Street is best known for the creative geniuses it attracted, people like Jim Henson and Joe Raposo and Frank Oz, who intuitively grasped what it takes to get through to children. They were television’s answer to Beatrix Potter or L. Frank Baum or Dr. Seuss. But it is a mistake to think of Sesame Street as a project conceived in a flash of insight. What made the show unusual, in fact, was the extent to which it was the opposite of that — the extent to which the final product was deliberately and painstakingly engineered. Sesame Street was built about a single, breakthrough insight: that if you can hold the attention of children, you can educate them.

The Tipping Point (pages 99-100)

Sunny Days!