web1_bicad.jpg

Pen company apologizes for message to South African women

web1_marriage.jpg

Clerk’s office defies order; no same-sex marriage licenses

<p>LOS ANGELES &#8212; The Muppets, longtime residents of PBS, are getting a second home at HBO.</p><p>The premium cable channel and Sesame Workshop, which produces &#8220;Sesame Street,&#8221; on Thursday announced a five-year deal that will expand the &#8220;Sesame Street&#8221; footprint and its amount of programming.</p><p>The next five seasons of the respected children&#8217;s series will be available on HBO and its related platforms, including HBO GO and HBO On Demand. The deal will allow the Sesame Workshop, a nonprofit educational organization, to produce almost double the content of previous seasons, HBO and the workshop said.</p><p>It will also, for the first time, provide the new shows free to PBS and its member stations after a nine-month window, they said.</p><p>&#8220;Our new partnership with HBO represents a true winning public-private partnership model,&#8221; said Jeffrey D. Dunn, Sesame Workshop&#8217;s CEO. He said it provides his organization with &#8220;critical funding&#8221; to continue producing the show and airing it on PBS, its home for 45 years.</p><p>Besides &#8220;Sesame Street,&#8221; the workshop will make a Muppets spinoff series and a new original educational series for children. HBO said it also has licensed more than 150 past episodes of &#8220;Sesame Street.&#8221;</p><p>Joan Ganz Cooney, co-founder of the series, said she has &#8220;long admired the creative work of HBO and can&#8217;t think of a better partner to continue the quality of &#8216;Sesame Street&#8217;s&#8217; programming.&#8221; She noted there have been dramatic changes in the way children consume video and the economics of the kids&#8217; TV business, and said Sesame Workshop must &#8220;adapt to the times.&#8221;</p><p>The move by HBO reflects another reality: fledgling TV competitors such as Amazon and Netflix are making their own forays into children&#8217;s programming as part of their streaming services.</p><p>The new episodes will begin airing as early as fall 2015, with HBO the exclusive, first-run subscription TV distribution partner for &#8220;Sesame Street&#8221; and the new series, in both English and Spanish. The new series will be available for PBS after the HBO window, with no interruption in the airing of &#8220;Sesame Street&#8221; as part of PBS Kids service on public television&#8217;s member stations, the partners said.</p><p>In addition to Sesame Street, HBO will also license approximately 50 past episodes of &#8220;Pinky Dinky Doo,&#8221; an animated series for preschoolers with a focus on early literacy, and &#8220;The Electric Company,&#8221; which relaunched in 2009, from Sesame Workshop.</p><style>
.neFileBlock {
	margin-bottom: 20px;
}
.neFileBlock p {
	margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
}
.neFileBlock .neFile {
	border-bottom: 1px dotted #aaa;
	padding-bottom: 5px;
	padding-top: 10px;
}
.neFileBlock .neCaption {
	font-size: 85%;
}
</style>
<div class='neFileBlock'>
<div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/web1_AP_100204128126.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">The Muppets, longtime residents of PBS, are getting a second home at HBO. From left are Ernie, Bert, Elmo, Cookie Monster (foreground), Abby Cadabby, and Zoe. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/web1_AP_100204128126.jpg</photo0><caption0>The Muppets, longtime residents of PBS, are getting a second home at HBO. From left are Ernie, Bert, Elmo, Cookie Monster (foreground), Abby Cadabby, and Zoe. </caption0><photoCredit0>AP Photo | Kathy Willens </photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By The Associated Press</p></bylineMeta></div>

HBO to carry ‘Sesame Street’; PBS to continue airing show