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Mar 30, 2010
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I'm going to preface this post by saying, please leave the politics of the situation out.

Recently, there has been much talk of pulling funding from public broadcasting. Well, Sesame Street is one of the products of public broadcasting. I understand Seaworld owns Sesame Place and has incorporated the Sesame Street brand into just about all of their parks.

My question is, to what extent does Seaworld Parks help to fund Sesame Street? Did they just purchase some licensing rights and that helps to fund some of Sesame Street? Or, do they contribute some part of the Sesame Place proceeds to the show?

I've just been curious, since they've talked about removing funding, where some other sources of funding for such a large brand as Sesame Street come from.

I know Seaworld has the wildlife conservation fund. I would surmise that some Sesame Place proceeds go towards providing funding for some educational television shows.
 
If Sesame dies, I would think that the parks could keep them as SWP&E mascots. It's not like there'd be a company that could sue them for use of a non-existing company's characters. They'd prolly just buy SS when it gets dirt cheap anyway.
 
I take it no one knows any more about the funding thing then I do then... Oh well. I was just curious if they donate any of the proceeds of the Sesame Place parks back to the show or educational television in general.
 
Sesame Street in on PBS by choice (commercial free environment). They are completely self-sustaining. They'll more than likely move to another format if PBS ceased to exist.

That being said, it's doubtful that PBS would cease operations altogether if the federal government cut off their funds. The fed really only provides a subsidy to PBS of about 12% of their total operating costs. A change in their business model should easily be able to compensate for that. (Though, I am NOT arguing in favor of cutting off PBS funding, just to be clear).
 
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