Children's Television Workshop project : oral history, 1972.

Scope and Contents

This series of interviews traces the development of the Children's Television Workshop and the creation of "Sesame Street" in the words of some of those principally responsible. They recall 1966 discussions of how television might be made to serve preschool children, preliminary studies, the roles of the Carnegie Corporation, of Harold Howe II as United States Commissioner of Education, and of the Ford Foundation in advancing the concept and helping finance it, the founding of the Workshop and its staffing, and the emergence of the Sesame Street format, as well as the changing relationship of the Workshop with National Educational Television, from which it became independent. Participants and transcript pagination: David Connell, 33; Joan Cooney, 24; Robert Davidson, 36; Barbara Finberg, 11; Louis Hausman, 21; Marjorie Martus and Claire List; Edward Meade, 14; Lloyd Morrisett, 12; John White, 13.

Subjects

• Carnegie Corporation of New York.
• Children's Television Workshop.
• Educational broadcasting.
• Ford Foundation.
• Howe, Harold, II, 1918-2002.
• Interviews.
• Oral histories.
• Public service television programs.
• Television in education.

Access Conditions

Copyright by The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, 1980 for all interviews, except Martus and List.