*Sesame Street and Cricket Media announced a 24/7 free ad-supported streaming channel that will launch with seasons 39 through 46, per Deadline. The channel will run about seven minutes of ads per hour, and Volkswagen and Toys "R" Us are among the launch advertisers.
Sesame Street was born on public television, bankrolled by a law Congress passed partly to keep ads out of kids' programming. Now it is heading to free streaming with seven minutes of ads an hour. The deal is framed as "widening access," which is the PR word for selling the house again. The homes it has sold: PBS, then HBO in 2016, a move Deadline's own piece calls "financial necessity," which is the most honest phrase in the whole announcement. Then Netflix last year, with a reimagined season 56. Every address on Sesame Street has been sold except the one that is for rent.
The buyer is Cricket Media, a 50-year-old children's publisher that bought the Sensical streaming platform in 2025 and also runs an AI product called HeyCricket. Its CEO calls the show "the pinnacle of kids media" and says the free channel proves "premium programming can attract major advertisers." Eight thousand hours of footage and the full 4,000-episode library, the first time any partner has held all of it, will be served out a few seasons at a time, refreshed monthly, with a launch ad slate headlined by Volkswagen and Toys "R" Us, a company that is no longer the company you remember.
Elmo always knew what he was: the last ad break that needs no commercial. He is the content, the brand and the audience, and now the ads have an address too. The street is free. What is being sold is the three-year-old version of you.
YOUR TURN: Seven minutes of ads an hour, all "screened" for family viewing. Is there a Volkswagen commercial Elmo can't handle, or is the real question whether he ever gets a commercial break?
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