Sesame Street Shinny Stars

Guest stars help Sesame Street stay current
More celebrities than ever scheduled for this anniversary season

By Shannon Proudfoot, The Ottawa Citizen -- November 9, 2009 -- 9:33 AM

CNN broadcaster Anderson Cooper appeared on Sesame Street in a segment featuring Oscar the Grouch with 'Walter Cranky and' 'Dan Rather-not' parodying news anchors.
Photograph by: Richard Termine, Sesame Street, Ottawa Citizen

When U.S. first lady Michelle Obama plants a garden with Elmo and Big Bird on Tuesday's premiere of the 40th season of Sesame Street, she'll be in good company -- and not just because of the Muppets.

Since James Earl Jones guest-starred on the first episode, more than 400 celebrity visitors have dropped by Sesame Street to sing a song, read a story or share a giggle, including Christopher Reeve, Danny DeVito, Alec Baldwin, Ray Charles, Smokey Robinson, Tina Fey, David Beckham, Natalie Portman, Anderson Cooper and three other wives of U.S. presidents.

But executive producer Carol-Lynn Parente says this milestone season will be Sesame Street's most "star-studded" yet, with 32 guest stars, including Sarah Jessica Parker, Jimmy Fallon and Kobe Bryant.

The show is in high demand among celebrities. Parente says they have more requests for guest-starring spots than they can accommodate in the 26 new episodes each year. Guest stars help draw in parents and keep the show feeling current, she says.

"Finding the audience has become the biggest challenge," Parente says. "It's much harder for us these days than it was in the early years. We are really, by comparison, a very, very small fish in a sea of what has become many oceans of children's programming." Preschoolers have become more savvy viewers, she says, and the non-profit Sesame Workshop is working to hold its own against "marketing machines" like Disney and Nickelodeon.

In response to heightened competition and changing viewing habits, Sesame Street has updated its look and music, Parente says, and the long-running "magazine" format of short segments mixed together has been replaced with a one-hour programming "block" anchored by four shows-within-the-show.

Sesame Street encourages "co-viewing" between parents and children because that's where the greatest educational benefits are, she says. While celebrity guest-stars and cheeky parodies of grown-up shows help keep the adults engaged, the young audience members come first.

They've done Muppet parodies like Desperate Houseplants -- in which a handsome gardener rescues two houseplants yearning for water and sun -- A's Anatomy, Law and Order: Special Letters Unit, Preschool Musical and 30 Rocks. A new Mad Men parody in which a Muppet Don Draper feels mad, sad and -- finally -- glad as he pitches ads for honey has already grabbed half-a-million views on YouTube since it was released as a sneak peek of the 40th season.

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