A few months after the 1969 premiere of the children's television program Sesame Street in the U.S., talks began in the United Kingdom to broadcast the programme or develop a co-production on British television. The idea was controversial at the time; the BBC was opposed to it, and ITV was reluctant. Response from parents, educators, and television officials to the show was varied, ranging from distaste to acceptance. After much public debate, the BBC chose not to air Sesame Street for several reasons, including the show's educational methods, its creation for American audiences, and the UK's long history of quality educational television programmes for young children. ITV, after much research, including a report entitled Reactions to Sesame Street in Britain, 1971, chose to air Sesame Street on a limited basis. It then switched to Channel 4 in the 1980s and aired there until 2001, when it was pulled from its regular schedule, replaced by The Hoobs.
The 1971 report stated that educators "abhorred" Sesame Street, while parents and young children viewed it more positively. The report was sceptical of the educational methods used to produce the show, and agreed with the BBC that quality children's programming was already in place in the UK, although it recognised that the public debate surrounding the show had improved children's television in Britain. It also stated that the producers of children's television programmes in Britain should follow the producers of Sesame Street's example and base their content on the feedback of its audience.
BBC
Sesame Street premiered on public broadcasting television stations in the US on 10 November 1969, to positive reviews, some controversy, and high ratings. A few months after its debut, producers from several countries requested that the Children's Television Workshop (CTW) create and produce versions of Sesame Street in their countries, which came to be called "international co-productions". Producers in the UK began discussing plans to broadcast either a co-production or the American broadcast on British television within six months after the show debuted in the US.
The BBC disliked the series from the very beginning and refused to air a British version, claiming that there were already children's television programmes that accomplished the same goals as Sesame Street. Throughout 1970 and 1971, debates raged in the British media about broadcasting the show in the UK. Joan Ganz Cooney, the creator of Sesame Street, expressed her hopes that a British version of the show could expose British children to "something more telling than The Magic Roundabout". Monica Sims, head of children's programming at the BBC at the time, stated, "This sounds like indoctrination, and a dangerous extension of the use of television". A teacher in North London showed the series to over 400 educators and reported that the most negative feedback was that Sesame Street was "brash and vulgar but utterly lovable".
On 24 November 1970, a half hour extract of the programme was shown at a meeting for the Society for Film and Television Arts. One member stated, "There is not much chance of it appearing on British television, but the Department of Education and Science was looking into using the programme in schools". Cooney said, "One day we thought: Can't we use commercials, not to sell products but to teach letters and numbers".
As the public debate over the series increased, Sims wrote a letter of reply in The Guardian outlining the BBC's decision and its objections regarding Sesame Street. It rejected the show's appearance in the UK because although the network aired other American programmes, as well as programmes produced all over the world, Sesame Street was produced specifically for American children, who were not exposed to children's programmes of the same high quality as those in Britain. Sims and the BBC claimed that the philosophy behind the show was what they called "wallpaper television", which encouraged children to watch television for several hours, something British programmes discouraged. The BBC also eschewed Sesame Street's didactic teaching methods, which the BBC felt was inappropriate in mass media. The BBC was against children's programming that dictated what young children should learn, so airing Sesame Street would go against twenty years of children's television programmes in the UK. Finally, Sims and the BBC believed that since Sesame Street was "carefully geared" to the needs of disadvantaged children in the U.S., much of the terminology, including the words "trash" and "zip code", would confuse four-year-olds in Britain.