"Sesame Street" signs new streaming deal with Netflix

The deal begins with the 56th season of "Sesame Street" which debuts later this year. And "The Simpsons" thinks it's been on for a while! In the rest of the world, new episodes of "Sesame Street" will live exclusively on Netflix, but in the United States they will still be available to watch on PBS, which only feels right. Plus, Netflix gets a couple-hundred episodes of a back catalog for good measure. Not the whole run, of course, but enough to power a few lengthy binge sessions.

The show is also being revamped for the 56th season, but this season to be is as much about what the Sesame Workshop wants to do. Each episode will now devote 11 minutes to a main story, and there will be a new animated segment about life in the apartment building that many of the street's denizens live in. Also, apparently Cookie Monster had a food truck and now it's coming back? Speaking of Cookie Monster...

"Sesame Street" had been on the re-rebranded HBO Max for the last five years, but Warner Bros. Discovery decided not renew. Netflix makes a better home for the show anyway, as parents are accustomed to turning to Netflix for children's programming. Now, something more palatable, maybe even occasionally entertaining to an adult, can be the show they put on for their young kids. Plus, while it is nice that PBS still gets to air new episode of "Sesame Street," there are plenty of parents that don't have over-the-air channels (and even if you have, say, an antenna, PBS's signal is prone to not coming in clear).

The only bummer is that it's too late for Cookie Monster to be on "Stranger Things." Or for Elmo to be banished to the Upside Down.

(h/t Variety)