Michelle Obama dreams of kids begging for fruits and vegetables instead of cookies and candy

First lady Michelle Obama teamed up with "Sesame Street" characters to promote fruits and vegetables to children on Wednesday.

Obama argued that if children saw fruits and vegetables branded with "Sesame Street" Muppets stickers, they would be more attracted to the products.

“Just imagine what will happen when we take our kids to the grocery store, and they see Elmo and Rosita and the other Sesame Street Muppets they love up and down the produce aisle,” she said. “Imagine what it will be like to have our kids begging us to buy them fruits and vegetables instead of cookies, candy and chips.

The Sesame Workshop and the Produce Marketing Association joined the Partnership for a Healthier America to utilize "Sesame Street" characters to deliver messages about the importance of eating fruits and vegetables.

Via: Washington Examiner

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Why Big Bird’s Federal Subsides Need to Go

The call to eliminate federal subsidies to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), such as Governor Mitt Romney’s recent statement, shouldn’t ruffle the famous fowl.

After all, not only does PBS not need taxpayer support, but because it inevitably entangles Big Bird in politics, it does him more harm than good.

Federal contributions to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which distributes money to PBS, totaled $444 million in FY 2012. While that may not be a lot in Washington, which spent a whopping $3.54 trillion that year, it is real money to most Americans.

But ending these subsidies wouldn’t break the bank for public broadcasting. In FY 2010 (information available to date), the CPB subsidies amounted to only 15 percent of public broadcasting station’s total funding. Other sources included listener and viewer contributions, university and foundation support, and business underwriting. Sesame Street itself received only $1.4 million in a federal grant through CPB in FY 2012. As Sherrie Westin, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Sesame Workshop, affirms:

[Sesame Workshop] receives very, very little funding from PBS. So, we are able to raise our funding through philanthropic, through our licensed product, which goes back into the educational programming, through corporate underwriting and sponsorship.

Big Bird and his popular Sesame Street neighbors would not disappear if federal ties are severed. Westin adds that “when they always try to tout out Big Bird, and say we’re going to kill Big Bird—that is actually misleading, because Sesame Street will be here.”

The “Golden Condor” has quite a healthy nest egg, too: Sesame Workshop reported a net worth of $356 million as of June 2011.

Via: The Foundry

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The Actor Who Created Big Bird Makes About $314,000 a Year

Even Big Bird has to make some money. The Sesame Workshop's 990 form for the 2010 tax year reveals that Caroll Spinney, the man behind the newsworthy yellow guy and Oscar the Grouch, made $314,072. That's the most recent form available at Guidestar, which covers the tax year ended June 30, 2011. At MSN Jonathan Berr writes that Spinney's salary shows that "like for-profit media companies, Sesame needs to pay top dollar to attract talent." Spinney has played the bird since the show began in 1969, though others have stepped into the role at times.

For a comparison in the world of children's television, the girl who voiced Dora the Explorer (and became embroiled in a legal tangle with Nickelodeon) made about $300,000 over three years, TMZ reported in 2010. Spinney, however, is a long-term resident on Sesame Street. 

Big Bird made national headlines last week when presidential candidate Mitt Romney invoked the character's during the debate. Now, to Sesame's chagrin, the Obama campaign is trying to make votes out of Romney's pledge to cut PBS funding. But Big Bird has a greater villain than Mitt Romney, Berr says—for instance, his for-profit competitors like Dora. Berr writes that "competition for the preschool market is tough and getting harder," and Sesame has had losses and layoffs. 

Via: The Atlantic Wire 

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Sesame Street Created '1.47' Jobs with $1M stimulus grant

This grant was brought to you by the letters “A” and “R” — as in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aka the “stimulus bill.”

Sesame Workshop, the independent nonprofit corporation that produces the popular childrens’ program Sesame Street, received a $1,067,532 stimulus bill grant in August 2010, via the Department of Health and Human Services.

The funding was to promote healthy eating according to the federal Recovery.gov website:

This grant was brought to you by the letters “A” and “R” — as in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aka the “stimulus bill.”

Sesame Workshop, the independent nonprofit corporation that produces the popular childrens’ program Sesame Street, received a $1,067,532 stimulus bill grant in August 2010, via the Department of Health and Human Services.

The funding was to promote healthy eating according to the federal Recovery.gov website:

SW [i.e., Sesame Workshop] will carry out an expansion of its highly successful Healthy Habits for Life initiative, which promotes improved nutrition and increased physical activity, targeting low-income preschool-aged children and their families and care providers.

The projected created “1.47″ new jobs, the website reported. How they could calculate this to a hundredth of a percent is anybody’s guess. In any event, that comes out to about $726,000 per job created.

The money is separate from the funds Sesame Workshop receives from the federally-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting to run the Sesame Street program on PBS stations.

The Recovery Act website lists the healthy eating project as more than 50 percent completed though most of the grant money appears to have been drawn.

Sesame Street has been in the news lately ever since Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said  last week that he would like to cut the funding PBS even though he likes Big Bird, a popular character on the show. The statement prompted a public comment from PBS criticizing Romney.

Via: Washington Examiner

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Steyn: Sesame Nation

Apparently, Frank Sinatra served as Mitt Romney’s debate coach. As he put it about halfway through “That’s Life”:

“I’d jump right on a big bird and then I’d fly . . . ”

Mark Steyn

That’s what Mitt did in Denver. Ten minutes in, he jumped right on Big Bird, and then he took off — and never looked back, while the other fellow, whose name escapes me, never got out of the gate. It takes a certain panache to clobber not just your opponent but also the moderator. Yet that’s what the killer Mormon did when he declared that he wasn’t going to borrow money from China to pay for Jim Lehrer and Big Bird on PBS. It was a terrific alpha-male moment, not just in that it rattled Lehrer, who seemed too preoccupied contemplating a future reading the hog prices on the WZZZ Farm Report to regain his grip on the usual absurd format, but in the sense that it indicated a man entirely at ease with himself — in contrast to wossname, the listless sourpuss staring at his shoes.

Yet, amidst the otherwise total wreckage of their guy’s performance, the Democrats seemed to think that Mitt’s assault on Sesame Street was a misstep from whose tattered and ruined puppet-stuffing some hay is to be made. “WOW!!! No PBS!!! WTF how about cutting congress’s stuff leave big bird alone,” tweeted Whoopi Goldberg. Even the president mocked Romney for “finally getting tough on Big Bird” — not in the debate, of course, where such dazzling twinkle-toed repartee might have helped, but a mere 24 hours later, once the rapid-response team had directed his speechwriters to craft a line, fly it out to a campaign rally, and load it into the prompter, he did deliver it without mishap.

Via: National Review

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