“Sesame Workshop, the non-profit behind Sesame Street, is cutting staff in an effort to “downsize significantly”, its president and CEO, Sherrie Rollins Westin, told employees this week.
The news of layoffs at the organization came just shortly after more than 200 employees at Sesame Workshop revealed their plans to unionize and comes several months after Warner Bros Discovery decided not to renew the distribution deal for new episodes of Sesame Street, the long-running, beloved children’s program.
In an email to staff on Wednesday, Rollins Westin told employees that Sesame Workshop was not ‘immune to the current economic challenges inherent to the drastically changing media landscape’ and that the end of their distribution deal combined with policy changes affecting their federal funding meant they were ‘confronted with a perfect storm’.
“These factors, among others, have left us with a significant budget gap that we must solve as we head into the next fiscal year,” she added.
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