Sesame Street characters pose under a “123 Sesame Street” sign in celebration of their 40th anniversary in 2009.
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Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images
Sesame Workshop will “downsize significantly” announced president and CEO Sherrie Rollins Westin on Wednesday in a note to staff.
The layoffs come about two months after Max said it would stop distributing Sesame Street episodes after 2025 and within a day after more than 200 of its employees asked for Sesame Workshop to recognize that they want to form a union. Cast – like puppeteers – crew and writers are already unionized, said a statement from OPEIU Local 153.
“Amid the changing media and funding landscape, we have made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our organization,” a Sesame Workshop spokesperson wrote in an email to NPR.
Last December, Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns Max, announced that, after 10 years, it was not renewing its deal to fund new episodes of the iconic children’s series. At the time, the corporation said its priorities had shifted and that Sesame Street was “not as core to our strategy.”
Sesame Workshop said the layoffs “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.”
Max is currently airing the 55th season of Sesame Street. Sesame Workshop has not announced a new distributor, but said production on its 56th season will begin next month.
Story edited by Jennifer Vanasco and Kristian Monroe.
