Street Gang (63 page)

In a sense, Elmo’s popularity helped save the day. To understand how, it takes revisiting that windfall Christmas season of 1997. “Tickle Me Elmo was a big hit . . . and the Workshop had a spike in its 1998 revenues,” Knell said. “It was also a terrific year in the stock market.” A $28 million increase, attributable to the toy’s success and a rise in value to the nonprofit’s stock portfolio, led the Workshop’s executive team to move forward with a plan to invest in Noggin, a digital cable channel for preschoolers. Their partner was Nickelodeon, one of the MTV networks owned by Viacom. In 1998, the Workshop invested $25 million in the project, and, over time, the channel became a welcome destination for kids and parents.

With money in the bank, the Workshop was in a position to strike when the Sesame Street Muppets became available. EM.TV accepted an offer of $180 million. “Everyone, most especially the puppeteers, were thrilled that we were able to bring them home,” Knell said. “It protected
Sesame Street
and allowed our international expansion to continue. Owning these characters has allowed us to maximize their potential. We are now in control of our own destiny.”

To make the deal, the Workshop borrowed $100 million from Summit Bank and worked out a payment plan with EM.TV to pay the German company $7 million per year for ten years. The final $10 million came out of the Workshop’s investment portfolio.

Within a year, the Workshop sold its half interest in Noggin to Viacom for a whopping $100 million, netting a $75 million profit after only five years in the digital cable business. “We used the net profit to pay back a large percentage of the [$100 million] loan and we prepaid that $7-million-a-year deal with EM.TV, significantly reducing the cost of our purchase price. [EM.TV] gave us a big discount because we paid in cash. I think we saved $20 million.”

In May 2003, the Jim Henson Company bought back most of its assets from EM.TV for the bargain price of $89 million. Other suitors, including bids by Disney and by Dean Valentine, once head of UPN television, were turned away by Haffa.

Elation and relief among the Hensons ensued. Then, a year later, the damnedest thing happened: the Muppets were sold again.

After eleven years of making efforts to do so, The Walt Disney Company finally bought the classic Muppets on February 17, 2004, for an undisclosed sum. Brian Henson, cochairman and cochief executive of the Jim Henson Company, said “Michael Eisner’s long-standing passion and respect for the Muppets give me and my family . . . confidence in Disney as a partner.”
³

“It all ended up in about as good a place as it could have ended up,” Gary Knell said. “We own the
Sesame Street
characters and Disney owns the classic Muppets. You go back years earlier and you see it’s exactly the way Jim wanted it.”

We mortals toil away and wonder whether there is a grand plan to all that transpires or whether it just unfolds as it goes. Sometimes, as Joan Cooney so fervently believes, it seems like you’re either lucky or you’re not. Other times it seems like all the coincidences and collisions, the caprice and the serendipity, happen for a reason.

 

What if Richard Hunt had not thrown the skinny red puppet to Kevin Clash?

In 2009, it’s hard to imagine a world without Elmo, a character so ubiquitous and inescapable that newborns seem to emerge from the womb with an Elmo doll attached to their umbilical cord. Many children say “Emmo” before they say “bye-bye.” Elmo is the marketing wonder of our age.

But more than that, as
Sesame Street
approaches age forty, Elmo remains the embodiment of the show. He’s an exuberant, inquisitive, trusting, embracing, innocent, playful, life-affirming star who long ago eclipsed Big Bird, although the eight-foot canary made
Sesame Street
the most influential children’s television show the world has ever seen. Elmo simply renewed the mission and added effervescence, at just the right moment. As President John Fitzgerald Kennedy might have said, Elmo demonstrated “vigor.”

The final lines of Kennedy’s inaugural address come to mind. In it he concluded, “With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

It may well be that Joan and Jim and Jon and Joe and Jeff and Lloyd and Dave and everyone else in the gang were doing God’s work on earth.

Put a finger to your lips and say it as Jim Henson might:
“Hmmmmm.”

Writing a book is like eating an elephant.

When it’s done, you want to unbuckle your belt, flop down on the couch, and belch. It’s a lot like that woozy hour after Thanksgiving dinner, minus John Madden, the turducken, and the tower of dirty dishes.

And so, before I drift for dreamland, there are people to thank for helping me bag the beast. If an orchestra begins to play, it means I’ve gone on too long.

Street Gang
grew out of an assignment during my seven years as a senior editor and Family Page columnist at
TV Guide
. During that spell I edited the work of J. Max Robins, a great white hunter of a reporter who covered the television industry. Max’s lust for reporting was infectious and his energy contagious. As Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson) said in
As Good as It Gets
, he made me want to be a better man.

Three additional former colleagues from
TV Guide
—Vashti Anderson (photo research), Abby Royle (transcription and research), and Maya Stanton (fact-checking) —provided exceptional service and support. Bravo, ladies.

Rutgers University undergraduate Padma Schwenzer assisted me in the summer of 2008. Her work was exemplary.

Literary agent Susan Reed convinced me to write this book, then promptly left the profession to edit
Golf for Women
magazine (“A Putter’s Dilemma: Skirt or Culottes?”). Susan, now editor of
O: The Oprah Magazine
, turned me over to Mark Reiter, a triple-threat author, editor, and literary agent.

Viking editor Rick Kot, who is eight feet tall and speaks so softly you have to turn up the Miracle Ear to the turbo setting, guided me through the wilderness.

Rick’s surefire assistant, Laura Tisdel, is the Annie Oakley of publishing; her aim is true and her spirit can-do. Plus, she looks great on a horse.

I devoted two years of research on
Sesame Street
before approaching Joan Ganz Cooney. The road to her office was paved, in part, by my
TV Guide
colleague Steve Battaglio, who passed a good word to an executive at the Workshop at just the right moment. Ellen Lewis, the Workshop’s high-energy vice president for public relations, greased the skids as well.

In Joan Cooney I found the rarest of birds, a relentlessly honest and forthright public figure who, more often than not, is the smartest person in the room. That she doesn’t flaunt it is only the least of her enviable attributes. Without her willingness to be tortured by my incessant questions—and without her opening the Workshop’s archives—
Street Gang
would have died aborning.

The same is true for Sesame Workshop cofounder Lloyd Morrisett, that beacon of integrity and intelligence. Lloyd, who gave Children’s Television Workshop its Y chromosome, informed this book in myriad and marvelous ways.

I met Harvard University professor John R. Stilgoe during my year in Cambridge as a Nieman fellow, and his influence was nothing short of transformative. At a confusing career crossroads, Professor Stilgoe cleaned my windshield and pointed me in the right direction, just like the men of Texaco once did on the byways of this great land.

When I was little, my parents used to say, “Turn off that TV and go find a nice book.” They were only half right. I’d never have written this book had I not loved television; I got a lot of it. But because Seymour and Eleanor Davis valued reading, I also was the kind of kid who would trudge home from the Newport (R.I.) Public Library with a sack of books. I found the mustiness of the library intoxicating.

My self-taught, immigrant grandmother, Cecelia Meierovitz, read every newspaper she could get her hands on. By the time I was ten, I did, too. There’s a connection.

The
Newport Daily News
hired me at fifteen to cowrite a weekly column (“Teen Scene”) and cover high school sports as a stringer. From 1968 on, I was never without a job in journalism, including a stint as sports editor of
The Daily Tar Heel
, the student-run paper at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I covered basketball at the
DTH
and have often described coach Dean Smith as the greatest teacher I never had. Most of what I know about leadership came from watching him and listening.

John Walter, then managing editor of the
Ithaca
(N.Y.)
Journal
, not only gave me work in 1974, he urged me to apply to the master’s in journalism program at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, the smartest move of my life. John left us suddenly in the summer of 2008; he’s probably editing Gannett’s
Heaven Today
.

 

I thank:

My daughters, Meagan and Tyler, for their love, support, and patience, and for providing a reason anew to watch
Sesame Street
.

My brother (and lecture agent!), Robert Paul Davis of the American Program Bureau, and his brilliant wife, Susan.

My daughters through marriage, Amy Becton and Jill Smith, and my grand-daughters through marriage, Brittany and Hope Smith.

Christine, Phil, and Bob Wilkinson, for their belief and encouragement.

 

Here comes that fat passage containing the names of people who would have gotten their own paragraph if paging had allowed: Juliann Barbato, Stephanie Baumoel, Francesca Belanger, Denis Boyles, Carolyn Coleburn, Jillian Davis, Lauren Davis, Alicia Durand, Holly Eardley, Robert Edelstein, Linda Ellerbee, Karen Falk, Sheila Feren, the Reverend Anne Gehman, Diana Goldstein, Kaitlin Gonser, Katherine Griggs, Pam Hacker, Rae Hammerman, Emily Kaiser, Marty Kaiser, Kate Lloyd, Arthur Novell, Nerina Rammairone, Steve Reddicliffe, Carole Remick, Joe Rhodes, Dan Roberts, Maurice Sendak, Emily Sklar, Dr. Barbara H. Sohmer, Steve Sonsky, and Melissa Tiers.

 

Finally, I thank the framers of the U.S. Constitution and those courageous Supreme Court justices who have upheld and protected the First Amendment. To borrow a phrase from magazine mogul and decorative arts doyenne Martha Stewart, it’s a good thing.

The author is grateful and indebted to the interview subjects for this book: Nick Aronson, Marty Arnold, Martin Baker, Lou Berger, Dr. Lewis Bernstein, Frank Biondo, Linda Bove, Molly Boylan, Fran Brill, Bernie Brillstein, David V. B. Britt, Alice Cahn, Dave Campbell, Chris Cerf, Peggy Charren, Dr. Milton Chen, George Clash, Gladys Clash, Kevin Clash, Bob Colleary, Jill Colley, Judy Collins, Pat Collins, Joan Ganz Cooney, Mike Dann, Jim Day, Emilio Delgado, Cynthia P. Deutsch, Danny Epstein, Jason Epstein, Bonnie Erickson, Susan Erion, Anne Evans, Karen Falk, Judy Freudberg, Amy Friedman, Julian Ganz, Brian Garfield, Tony Geiss, Arthur Gelb, Dave Goelz, Linda Gottlieb, Louis L. Gould, Pam Green, Karen Gruenberg, Robert Hatch, Richard D. Heffner, Brian Henson, Cheryl Henson, Jane Henson, Don Hewitt, Jane Hunt, Kate Hunt, Al Hyslop, Eric Jacobson, Brown Johnson, James Earl Jones, Jim Jinkins, Jerry Juhl, Chloe Kimball, Emily Kingsley, Gary Knell, David Lazer, Sharon Lerner, Jerry Lesser, Loretta Long, Joan Lufrano, Sonia Manzano, Ted May, Joey Mazzarino, Mac McGarry, Bob McGrath, Alan Menken, Lloyd Morrisett, Mary Morrisett, Annie Moss, Jerry Nelson, Arthur Novell, Rosie O’Donnell, Roscoe Orman, Sarah Morrisett Otley, Frank Oz, Pete Peterson, Alaina Reed, Charles Rosen, David Rudman, Arlene Sherman, Cathy Short, Fred Silverman, Lisa Simon, Dulcy Singer, Stuart Sucherman, Nick Raposo, Marty Robinson, Charlie Rosen, Diane Sawyer, Josh Selig, Craig Shemin, Liz Smith, Caroll Spinney, Norman Stiles, Beverley Stone, Jon Stone, Polly Stone, John Tartaglia, David Tatum, James Taylor, Rosemarie Truglio, Tom Whedon, Steve Whitmire, Mo Willems, Vanessa Williams, Caroly Wilcox, Norton Wright, and Janet Wolf.

Interviews:
The re-creation of the Jim Henson memorial was based on interviews with Martin Baker, Bernie Brillstein, Chris Cerf, Kevin Clash, Joan Ganz Cooney, Dave Goelz, Jane Henson, David Lazer, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, Marty Robinson, Dulcy Singer, Craig Shemin, Caroll Spinney, and Steve Whitmire.

Additional Sources:
Sesame Workshop provided a videotape of the memorial.

Interviews:
The dinner party re-creation is based on recollections gleaned from the author’s conversations with Joan Ganz Cooney, Anne Bower Bement, Lloyd Morrisett, and Mary Morrisett. All factual references were confirmed by the sources.

Additional Sources:
A splendid series of videotaped oral histories from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences proved essential as background material for this book. Included in the collection are not only interviews with Cooney and Morrisett, but an array of personalities who figured prominently in developing and sustaining the Children’s Television Workshop (changed in 2000 to Sesame Workshop) and
Sesame Street
. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from those recordings, the author’s interviews, or
Children’s Television Workshop, The Early Years: An Oral History
by Robert Davidson (CTW, 1993).