Joan Ganz Cooney was the chief driving force behind the creation of Children’s Television Workshop (CTW, now Sesame Workshop) and the most successful children’s television show in the history of either commercial or educational television, Sesame Street. Before Sesame Street, successful children’s programs were entertainment oriented and appeared on commercial television; educational programs were thought to be boring and pedantic, and they appeared on public television, which garnered a small, more affluent audience. Cooney recognized that television could do more than entertain; it could provide supplementary education at a fraction of the cost of classroom instruction. She demonstrated that quality educational programming could attract and hold a mass audience and established an organization that continues to produce innovative programming for all ages. And, through Sesame Street, a larger, more diverse audience discovered public television, bringing it to the forefront of the national consciousness.

Cooney had an early interest in education, earning a B.A. degree in education from the University of Arizona in 1951, but she gravitated toward the mass media in part as a result of the influence of the Christophers, a religious group that emphasizes utilizing communication technologies for humanitarian goals. Although she began her career as a reporter for the Arizona Republic in 1952, she moved into television in 1954, joining the NBC publicity department in New York. By 1955, she was handling publicity for the prestigious U.S. Steel Hour. However, public television offered greater opportunity to do in-depth analyses of major issues, and she moved to the noncommercial WNDT-TV (now WNET-TV) in New York in 1962, where she produced a number of documentaries, including A Chance at the Beginning, a Harlem precursor of Project Head Start, and the Emmy Award–winning Poverty, Anti-Poverty, and the Poor.

At a 1966 dinner party at her apartment, Lloyd N. Morrisett, vice president of the Carnegie Corporation, wondered aloud whether television could be a more effective educator. Realizing that she could continue to produce documentaries without having a lasting effect on the disadvantaged, Cooney undertook a study called “The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education.” This vision was the genesis of a proposal she submitted to Carnegie in February 1968, a proposal that resulted in the establishment of CTW and the creation of Sesame Street. Morrisett was particularly active in developing the proposal and raising the initial funds, and he remains a guiding force of CTW, as chair of the board of directors. But it was Cooney who articulated the creative vision and established the organization that brought it to reality.

Cooney proposed taking advantage of commercial production techniques, such as the fast pacing and repetition of advertisements and the multiple formats of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, to give life to the curriculum. Although she hoped the program would educate all preschool children, she stated that if the needs of disadvantaged children were not met, the program would be a failure.

Cooney also recognized that educational programs often fail because they are planned by educators and implemented by production personnel. Shortly after the creation of CTW in March 1968, therefore, she established a series of seminars in collaboration with Gerald S. Lesser (a Harvard educational psychologist who became chairman of the board of advisers). Production personnel (under David D. Connell, executive producer) worked with educators, child development experts, and research personnel (under Edward L. Palmer, director of research) to plan the show. Cooney, as executive director of CTW, established the guidelines, stressing the importance of exploiting the unique features of television to present a well-defined curriculum designed to supplement rather than replace classroom activity. She indicated that there was to be no star but rather a multiracial cast including both sexes and that the primary goal was to produce an excellent program, not more academic research. The working environment she established was one that fostered mutual confidence and participation among its diverse members.

Once her vision was articulated, Cooney developed an organization that guaranteed the production team the freedom to focus on the creative task. Although required by funding agencies to establish an affiliation with National Educational Television (NET), CTW remained semiautonomous and self-contained, utilizing some administrative functions of NET, but retaining all rights to the program. Cooney traveled the country, ensuring morning airtime for the new show. CTW also used unprecedented means of informing the potential audience, enlisting commercial networks in promotional efforts. Those efforts were coupled with more personal means of reaching disadvantaged families— using sound trucks and door-to-door representatives, for example.

Sesame Street first aired in November 1969, on nearly 190 public and commercial stations, and by all measures has been a continuing success. In large-scale studies, the Educational Testing Service of Princeton concluded that Sesame Street generally reached its educational goals. The show also rapidly gained a mass audience, which it currently maintains. And there have been numerous critical measures of success, including a Peabody Award and three Emmys after the first year and 58 Emmys to date.

After the first successful season, CTW dissolved its relationship with NET, and Cooney became its president. The impetus was there to develop other projects, so Cooney guided the fund-raising and creative vision for a second show, airing in 1971, called The Electric Company. This program provided basic reading instruction for 8-to-12-year-old children. Although by 1973 Cooney described her work as mostly administrative, her vision of using the unique features of television coupled with methodical planning and research to produce programming to address identified needs was evident in other innovative CTW productions, including Feelin’ Good (1974), The Best of Families (1977), 3-2-1 Contact (1980), and Square One TV (1987).

Since the role of foundations is usually to provide start-up money, and since government support of public television has declined, Cooney has extended the influence of CTW productions and ensured the organization’s survival by guiding the licensing of an array of commercial products and developing foreign distribution and production agreements. Product and international revenues have often provided as much as two-thirds of the budget, helping to sustain CTW and provide money for new projects. Cooney has also led CTW down the narrow road between commercial and public television, developing tax-paying subsidiaries that operate in commercial broadcasting, such as Distinguished Productions, which produced Encyclopedia in 1988 in collaboration with HBO.

In 1990 Cooney stepped down as president to become chair of the CTW executive committee, thus allowing her more time for creative development. Still actively involved in the creation of Sesame Street, she also focuses on strategic planning, with more recent projects involving interactive software and a multimedia project titled Ghostwriter, which debuted in 1992.

Cooney has enriched children’s television with her vision, altered public perception and introduced record-setting audiences to public television, and raised the level of expectation for children entering school.