Sesame Workshop and HBO have reached a wide-ranging five-year agreement which provides that HBO will fund production of Sesame Street and some related programming in exchange for an exclusive window, the companies announced Thursday.  PBS will make the programming available to PBS and its member stations free of charge (for the first time) after a nine-month window.  The deal provides for a doubling of Sesame Workshop’s programming production.

Sesame Workshop CEO Jeffrey D. Dunn described the deal as a winning public-private model.  “Our new partnership with HBO represents a true winning public-private partnership model,” he said. “It provides Sesame Workshop with the critical funding it needs to be able to continue production of Sesame Street and secure its nonprofit mission of helping kids grow smarter, stronger and kinder; it gives HBO exclusive pay cable and SVOD access to the nation’s most important and historic educational programming; and it allows Sesame Street to continue to air on PBS and reach all children, as it has for the past 45 years.” 

Programming planned under the new deal includes five seasons of Sesame Street, a Sesame Street Muppet spinoff series, and a new original educational series for kids.  The new episodes, in both English and Spanish, are expected to begin airing in Fall 2015. 

HBO has also licensed rights to over 150 library episodes of Sesame Street and 50 episodes of the series Pinky Dinky Doo and Electric Company.   

The Sesame Workshop programming will air on HBO’s channels, HBO Go, HBO On Demand, and the HBO OTT (over-the-top) SVOD service HBO Now.