Plaza Sésamo is one of the most classic educational programs, with more than 50 years of history.
Over the weekend it became known that HBO Max signal has made the decision to drop many episodes of the popular and historical program for children Street of sesame.
The series, which has been a classic on American television for decades, had 650 episodes and will now only have 456 episodes from the most recent seasons.
As reported after the controversy that has been generated among fans of all ages, it is a new decision by the Warner Bros Discovery companywho recently bought HBO Max. The goal is to reduce the cost of paying for rights to stream content.
far fewer episodes
As of Friday, HBO Max has presented a total of 456 episodes of Street of sesamewith a selection of seasons 1, 5 and 7, plus all episodes from seasons 39 to 52. Previously there were a total of 650, including episodes of seasons 2, 3, 4, 6 and all between 8 and the 35.
A spokesperson for HBO Max told the Variety trade magazine, “Street of sesame is and always has been an important part of television culture and one of the crown jewels of our preschool content catalog. We promise to keep delivering Street of sesame home, including previews of the 53rd season and more than 400 episodes of the most recent and past seasons.
It should be noted that some chapters of Street of sesame are still available on the public channel PBS and the Street of sesame on Youtube. And on HBO there are still the ten episodes of Sesame Street Mecha Buildersseven seasons of My friends from Sesame Street and the special The hunt for the magic wandwith beloved characters Elmo and Abby.
The agreement between HBO and the production company of Street of sesame, called Sesame Workshop, was signed in 2015 and gave HBO a chance to preview new episodes before on PBS, the show’s historic home. In return, Sesame Workshop will receive a new source of income.
The explanation of the specialists
Other shows that HBO stopped offering last week were 20 original Signal productions, including the teen drama Generationthe animated anthology endless train and children’s program Summer camp island. And at the beginning of the month, the eight films of Harry Potter.
The goal of all this “purging”, as its detractors already say, is to save $ 3 billion after the merger of Warner Bros with Discovery, which generated a debt of 55 billion.
While HBO Max has already paid for the production of these shows, keeping them in the content offering continues to generate monthly royalty payments to the cast, writers and technical team. They are called “residues”. By eliminating these programs, the savings are immediate. According to specialists, it is possible to save “tens of millions of dollars”.
“As we work to bring our content catalogs together on a single platform, we will be making changes to the content offerings available on both HBO Max and Discovery +,” the HBO Max statement reads. “This will include removing some content from both. platforms, “he added.
Among the latest decisions was the removal of Vinylseries conceived by Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese, and the suspension of the premiere, both at the cinema and in streaming of bad girlalthough the $ 90 million film had already been shot and its post-production was almost complete.
In addition, the company has renounced the investment it intended to make in the UK with the new news channel GB News, launched last June.
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Source: Clarin
