1. Sesame Street theme. Music by Joe Raposo; lyrics by Raposo, Jon Stone, and Bruce Hart. "Sesame Street Theme" Courtesy of Children's Television Workshop. [BACK]

2. Mayer, About Television . [BACK]

3. Freedman's quote on television's potential is from Polsky, Getting to "Sesame Street," p. 2. [BACK]

4. Morrisett's letter to Freedman is quoted in Alan Sheldon, "Tuning in with Joan Cooney," Public Telecommunications Review (Nov.-Dec. 1978). [BACK]

5. Alan Sheldon, "Tuning in with Joan Cooney," Public Telecommunications Review (Nov.-Dec. 1978). [BACK]

6. Polsky, Getting to "Sesame Street," p. 11. [BACK]

7. The actual cost of the first year's production was closer to $7 million. The remaining $1 million was applied to the second year's show. [BACK]

8. Aims of the Children's Television Workshop were announced in a press release, Mar. 21, 1968, issued jointly by the U.S. Office of Education, Carnegie Corporation, and the Ford Foundation, NPBA. [BACK]

9. Jack Gould, "Educational TV Network to Teach Preschool Child," New York Times , Mar. 21, 1968. [BACK]

10. The Children's Television Workshop was incorporated in April 1970 by Lloyd Morrisett, Joan Ganz Cooney, Gerald S. Lesser, Ralph B. Rogers, and James Day. The original board of trustees included, in addition to the five incorporators, Mrs. Emmett Rice, associate director of the College Entrance Board; the Honorable Terry Sanford, former governor of North Carolina; Eddie N. Williams, vice president for public affairs, University of Chicago; and Dr. Lawrence A. Cremin, Frederick A. P. Barnard Professor of Education, Columbia University Teacher's College. [BACK]

11. David D. Cornell, interviewed by the author, New York, June 24, 1983. [BACK]

12. Polsky, Getting to "Sesame Street," p. 33. [BACK]

13. Cornell, interview. [BACK]

14. Village Voice , Nov. 10, 1969. [BACK]

15. Jack Gould, "This 'Sesame' May Open the Right Doors," New York Times , Nov. 23, 1969. [BACK]

16. Cornell, interview. [BACK]

17. "Who's Afraid of Big, Bad TV?" Time , Nov. 23, 1970. [BACK]

18. Evelyn Davis, interviewed by the author, New York, June 1983. [BACK]

19. The results of Sesame Street 's first year are in Ball and Bogatz, First Year of "Sesame Street." [BACK]

20. Bogatz and Ball, Second Year of "Sesame Street." [BACK]

21. G. Lesser, Children and Television (pp. 174-201), provides detailed criticisms of the Workshop's premises and goals, including its failure to close the advantaged-disadvantaged gap, its methods, and its effects on the target audience, together with his analysis and response to these criticisms. [BACK]

22. Monica Sims's criticisms of Sesame Street were published in The Guardian (Manchester), Dec. 22, 1970. Lesser (p. 180) gives a brief account of her criticisms in his analysis of the show's critics. [BACK]

23. G. Lesser, Children and Television , p. 134. [BACK]

24. "Lightning in a bottle" is quoted from author's interview with Danny Epstein, New York, June 24, 1983. [BACK]

25. Land, Children's Television Workshop , p. v. [BACK]

26. "Long-Awaited Sesame Street Bows as Imaginative TV Head-Start Program," Variety , Nov. 12, 1969. [BACK]