NEW YORK — Can you tell me how to get to HBO?
Sesame Workshop, the organization behind the beloved and award winning “Sesame Street,” announced on Thursday that the long-time children’s show will be heading to HBO for the next five seasons.
The series, which has aired on PBS for decades, will continue to be aired on the public station, but will now also be broadcast on HBO’s family of networks and digital channels including its stand-alone service, HBO NOW.
The move will also allow “Sesame Street” to produce “almost twice as much new content as previous seasons” and will make the show available for free to PBS and its member stations for the first time in its history, according to the company.
HBO, which is owned by Time Warner like CNN, has also licensed over 150 archived episodes of the series. The new episodes of “Sesame Street” will premiere later this fall.
“Our new partnership with HBO represents a true winning public-private partnership model,” Jeffrey D. Dunn, CEO of Sesame Workshop, said in a statement. “It provides Sesame Workshop with the critical funding it needs to be able to continue production of Sesame Street and secure its nonprofit mission of helping kids grow smarter, stronger and kinder.”
HBO’s CEO Richard Plepler said that “Sesame Street” is the “most important preschool education program in the history of television” and that HBO is “delighted to be a home for this extraordinary show, helping Sesame Street expand and build its franchise.”
Sesame Workshop also announced that it will produce a “Sesame Street” spinoff series and also develop new original “educational series for children.”
