Netflix’s decision to pick up Sesame Street for a 56th season has garnered much coverage in the media, including major international publications. However, many of these claims misleadingly tie this news to President Trump’s order to terminate the Ready to Learn grant distributed by the U.S. Department of Education to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The Misleading Claims
In the wake of Netflix picking up Sesame Street, the BBC in the United Kingdom wrote ‘Sesame Street heads to Netflix after Trump pulled funding.’ Sky News in Australia’s headline was ‘Sesame Street heading to Netflix after Trump cut PBS funding.’ The Times of India said ‘Netflix ‘saves’ Sesame Street after US President Donald Trump cuts PBS funding.’ All three claims are misleading.
Sesame Street has often been used as a poster child for funding of PBS by proponents in the U.S. Congress. For example, in a
press release on May 2, House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03) claimed ‘President Trump Moves to Eliminate Sesame Street, Suppress Emergency Alerts’ and that ‘His latest executive order threatens beloved PBS KIDS children’s programming like Sesame Street and Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood.’
The Truth
One international press outlet did provide accurate reporting: Canada’s
CBC, which wrote ‘Sesame Street will move to Netflix, but keeps its longtime home on PBS.’
In reality, while Sesame Street has been a beneficiary of the Ready to Learn grant in the past, it last received funding from the U.S. Department of Education in 2006. Sesame Street has aired 597 episodes across 18 seasons since then. It also has not been a PBS exclusive since 2016. In fact, new episodes of Sesame Street have aired first on HBO (2016-2020) or HBO Max/Max (2020-2025) and later on PBS for over nine years.
It’s also true that Sesame Street was looking for a new home, but not because of any action taken by President Trump. Rather,
HBO Max chose not to renew the series for a 55th season in December 2024. This comes as Warner Bros. Discovery announced a departure from children’s programming on their flagship streaming service, a decision that also led to the removal of all classic Looney Tunes shorts. So while Netflix did save Sesame Street from an uncertain fate, it was a result not of funding cuts from the U.S. government, but from Warner Bros. Discovery.
Sesame Street’s ties to PBS will actually strengthen when new episodes move to Netflix. Under the Netflix deal, new episodes of Sesame Street will premiere on PBS the same day as they premiere on Netflix. Warner Bros. Discovery kept new episodes away from PBS for months before allowing them to air.
It should be noted that broader funding cuts proposed by President Trump and the Republican-led U.S. House subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (
DOGE) do pose an existential threat to public television at their most extreme. If such cuts were already enacted, Netflix would indeed have saved Sesame Street from funding cuts — but only for households able to afford a subscription to the streaming service. That’s a discussion for another article.
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