Where were you when Mr. Hooper died?

[formulanone]

But, when you look at some other aspects of life and find that what's absolutely fundamental to one person's experience is completely alien to another's, and juxtapose that fact with the notion that both people are members of the same supposedly unified culture, that's when you're reminded of the constant effort that's always been required to preserve that unity.

With the tremendous amount of TV channels now available on TV, and the tens-of-thousands of niche websites out there, ever-increasing variety of activities, products, music, movies; combined expanding and varying cultural norms, the concept of "mainstream popular culture" is likely vanishing, in a way.

Each generation is probably less likely to experience the same monolithic events and so-called cultural touchstones, except on a local basis.

[hbelkins]

If I have HB's biography right, he would have had access to Kentucky's version of PBS.  He, like myself, is just too old to have cared about the show referenced.

We got two channels on over-the-air TV -- Lexington's Channel 18 (NBC) and 27 (CBS). For some reason, Lexington's ABC affiliate (at the time WBLG, Channel 62) had a signal too weak for us to be able to pick up.

We also were able to barely pick up one of the Kentucky Educational Television (the PBS affiliate) repeaters, Channel 46, when it launched. I have a vague recollection of watching the first episode of "Sesame Street" because I was an avid reader of DC Comic books and Batman and Superman were supposed to appear in that inaugural episode. But SP's pretty much right; I was too old to be the show's target audience.

We first got cable sometime in the mid-70's. Besides the two Lexington channels we already got over-the-air, the cable system added Lexington's KET and ABC (which became WTVQ, Channel 36) affiliates and what was then known as Channel 17 out of Atlanta, WTBS. It was a different cable service than what the folks in the city limits and in other areas of the county got, because they got 13 channels including ESPN and WYMT-TV, the CBS affiliate in Hazard.

My dad grew up about a mile from where I did, at a higher elevation. They had early television service and depending on which way they turned the antenna, they could either pick up Channel 3 (WAVE) out of Louisville or Channel 3 (WSAZ) out of Huntington. I know my grandmother was able to pick up the Lexington ABC affiliate over-the-air whereas we could not. She never did get cable before her death in 1992.

But no, I'm too old to have cared about "Sesame Street" and it has no meaning to me, except to wonder why public broadcasting is always begging for money when the "Sesame Street" characters make a ton of money. PBS should have demanded a cut of the merchandising rights.

[empirestate]

If I have HB's biography right, he would have had access to Kentucky's version of PBS.  He, like myself, is just too old to have cared about the show referenced.

[...]

But no, I'm too old to have cared about "Sesame Street" and it has no meaning to me, except to wonder why public broadcasting is always begging for money when the "Sesame Street" characters make a ton of money.

Sure, it occurred to me that age might be the explanation, and indeed, it may be quite as simple as that (especially if one didn't also have kids young enough to have been watching). But that reinforces my point: to me, the show was so fundamental to my upbringing that I am genuinely surprised when I hear that someone knows nothing about it, even when there's a perfectly logical reason. I think that same effect is what gets the general public into a lot of its disagreements over a vast array of topics: the principles that are absolutely immutable to those holding one point of view may not even be within the awareness of those holding the opposing view.

(The difficulty, of course, is in ensuring that although we may not personally have experienced something, we don't then discount it as not having occurred or being important to someone else. But that's getting off the thread...)

[GCrites]

Remember, much of Appalachia didn't have all the channels that other areas did. My grandma in Eastern Ohio only got CBS and and NBC station that would go ABC if it had an important sporting event -- both of which were Wheeling stations. My '80s G.I. Joe and Transformers jokes fell flat on my classmates at Marshall. That's where and when I learned not to use pop culture references as a crutch in making conversation. It has served me well since I spend less and less time around people around my age each day.

I guess in northern Kentucky we could reliably pick up 5 over-the-air stations in the mid-'70s, and 7 stations in the early '80s. We never got cable until 1983. I think one of the big cultural divisions here had to do with the fact that Cincinnati's leading pop radio station in the '80s had a very short playlist and refused to regularly play a lot of songs that I heard on 'American Top 40', MTV, or a small station. So if I mentioned some song that was a big national hit in the '80s, a lot of people around here who are my age won't remember it. (The big station around here refused to play a lot of David Bowie and Duran Duran songs that were big hits.)

It certainly seems that Cincinnati had a Supertramp blackout, for one. Right before the digital switch I was picking up a ridiculous number of channels in Cincinnati on the rabbit ears. I got all the Cincinnati channels including the low-power ones such as crazy Channel 25 with Dutch drag racing and the Trekkies who sat at a desk and talked politics (one called for Dick Cheney to be hung as a war criminal). Plus there were 3 Kentucky PBS channels and several Dayton channels to be pulled in. And there was Oxford PBS.

[Tschiezberger123]

I was about to turn -16 (I was born in 1999)

[Dougtone]

Considering that I turned 3 in 1983, I was actually in prime Sesame Street viewing age. However, I have no memory of watching the particular episode where Mr. Hooper died.

[GeauxLSU]

I was dead

[GeauxLSU]

Channel 17 was WTCG when it first went national. It changed it is call letters later.

[Pete from Boston]

Wheeling has had a PBS, actually 2, one wasting Ohio taxpayers money and the other wasting West Virginia taxpayers money for many decades.  WV's worst governor's wife was, and still is, a bigwig with PBS and in many places in WV the only station you can get OTA is a repeater of WV PBS.  Poor roads, poor schools, poor policing, poor everything, but unlimited $$ to pour down the PBS rathole. 

If I have HB's biography right, he would have had access to Kentucky's version of PBS.  He, like myself, is just too old to have cared about the show referenced. 

I remember when TV equaled three channels for me (Fox was not yet launched, we did not get CBS).  We considered it to be 2 channels, because nothing of merit was ever on PBS.  I remember when, first, sat delivered channels came to cable, and then, even better, home sat dishes became affordable.  What a great invention.  It fundamentally meant rural people had access to the mainstream of entertainment.

PBS provided children's programming with structured educational content that offered an alternative to that designed primarily to induce desire for cereal, toys, or other purchases.  Even into the teenage years, programs like Nova and Nature provided excellent jumping-off points for classroom lessons.  PBS is the broadcast parallel for that excellent physical commitment of ours to diffusing knowledge, the public library.

[GaryV]

Grand Rapids didn't get a PBS station until 1972, when I was in HS.

But I recall my younger sisters watching Sesame Street before that.  I think it was broadcast on one of the other network stations (we had 3, although we didn't get ABC until 1962).

I was well into the workforce by the time Mr. Hooper died, but I remember hearing about it.  My oldest daughter was 1, so perhaps my wife was watching it with her.

I heard a few years ago that for the then-elementary students, Viet Nam was twice as long ago as WW2 was for me when I was in elementary.  Wow.

[Mapmikey]

But no, I'm too old to have cared about "Sesame Street" and it has no meaning to me, except to wonder why public broadcasting is always begging for money when the "Sesame Street" characters make a ton of money. PBS should have demanded a cut of the merchandising rights.

Sesame Street stopped making tons of money years ago when it was no longer the only game in town for kids.  And the money it did get had to be split with Jim Henson Inc.

Sesame Street wasn't made by PBS...was made by then-called Children's Television Workshop who did get some gov't funding in its early years but none since 1981.  They also offered the show to the Big 3 networks back when they first started and got no takers.

Today the show is funded by HBO and PBS is allowed to air new episodes after a time delay (several months) for free.

PBS had a study commissioned (http://www.cpb.org/files/aboutcpb/Alternative_Sources_of_Funding_for_Public_Broadcasting_Stations.pdf) at the request of Congress in 2012 to do what you suggest for merchandising rights, etc (as part of broader question about alternative $ sources for public broadcasting).  The largest problems were that PBS didn't own the rights to start with and that the $ that would be available is only 5% of the sales price of an item (50% went to manufacturer, 45% went to the store); also, outside of Sesame Street's heyday, none of the shows actually make all that much money anyway.

I watched Sesame Street in the mid-70s and was also too old by the time Mr. Hooper passed.  But that episode routinely makes lists of the best shows ever made on children's TV.

[GCrites]

Sesame Street 2016 is almost nothing like the pre-2000 show.

[Max Rockatansky]

They finally revealed Snuffeupagus because they feared that parents would not believe their children if they were reporting abuse. Big Bird represents a child's POV, so the Sesame Street adults didn't believe him when he talked about his invisible friend.

The explanation I heard is that they feared children would think their parents wouldn't believe them.

Wait a minute....when the hell was this?  I was under the impression that Big Bird always went to hang out with Snuffy and within the "Sesame Street Universe" he was always a really entity. 

[GCrites]

Maybe Snuffy was weed.

[Max Rockatansky]

Maybe Snuffy was weed.

Wouldn't that be more akin to LSD if Big Bird was seeing things and talking to beings that weren't there?  I still want an explanation for the spacial vortex in Oscar's garbage can.

Speaking of Big Bird there might be some PTSD after that whole saga of Follow that Bird.  First that "Feathered Friends Society" strong arms him into a family coke accident birds.  After he tries to escape he's literally captured and put into slavery....literally he's painted blue and made a slave of a traveling circus.  Literally it takes a high speed car chase to liberate him from his captures at the end...which almost cost Gordon his VW courtesy of Cookie Monster.

[empirestate]

Considering that I turned 3 in 1983, I was actually in prime Sesame Street viewing age. However, I have no memory of watching the particular episode where Mr. Hooper died.

I'd have been 7, and to be honest, I don't specifically remember watching it either. I remember the general story arc and the characters both before and after, and I'm very aware now of the episode's significance in context.

I do, however, remember the episode where Snuffy was revealed. As I recall, it was Elmo's fault; and moreover, that was pretty much the end of my viewing career with that show.

[PHLBOS]

Given that I was in my senior year in high school at the time, I didn't really follow the show at all after 1972.  I have no real recollection of that particular episode nor event.

[Pete from Boston]

They finally revealed Snuffeupagus because they feared that parents would not believe their children if they were reporting abuse. Big Bird represents a child's POV, so the Sesame Street adults didn't believe him when he talked about his invisible friend.

The explanation I heard is that they feared children would think their parents wouldn't believe them.

Wait a minute....when the hell was this?  I was under the impression that Big Bird always went to hang out with Snuffy and within the "Sesame Street Universe" he was always a really entity.

My years of Sesame Street were long before Snuffelupagus was revealed to the general population of Sesame Street, and I never realized he was invisible to them either.

I too have heard that his revelation to the other characters was to bolster children's confidence in telling truths they feared adults would not believe.

I guess they were doing something right if we are still talking about the ways CPB/CTW/PBS taught kids life lessons 30 years ago.

[CNGL-Leudimin]

I was yet to be a thing.

This is another thread in the 'bandit957's silly things' series.

[formulanone]

This is another thread in the 'bandit957's silly things' series.

It's only appropriate that a discussion of Sesame Street occurs at AARoads.

[dvferyance]

He was always dead to me. I kind of wondered why the place was called Hooper's store.

[Scott5114]

This is another thread in the 'bandit957's silly things' series.

It's only appropriate that a discussion of Sesame Street occurs at AARoads.

Maybe the Exit 353 asked about in another current thread is the one that goes to Sesame St.

[GCrites]

Sesame St. is an un-numbered road.

[Max Rockatansky]

Sesame St. is an un-numbered road.

Yes but did it carry any highways that were realigned prior to the 1960s?  That lack of signage continuity could be a contributing factor on why so many people ask "can you tell me how to get to Seasame Street?"  Could have been a parking lot if Mr. Meanie had his way, then what pertaining to "roadgeekry" would we have?

[elsmere241]

I was in fifth grade, I don't know if I'd turned ten or not.  I remember hearing about it from my parents, I didn't watch that episode.  I think it was after Thanksgiving, since the radio had just started playing Christmas music.