Hello all,

Proper intro first...
I am Charity Pitcher-Cooper new grad. BSN, RN on my way to becoming an
IBCLC and homebirth midwife. I have been lurking with great success for a
couple of months.  I am something of a breastfeeding "legacy" having a
whole family history of breastfeeding advocacy behind me.  In addition to
my breastfeeding roots, I have been lucky to have the support and guidance
of a very caring IBCLC, who is not only my friend and mentor, but my mother-
in-law as well:-)


Inside info on Sesame Street...

(I know this would have been better with the thread a few weeks ago, but it
has taken me this long to connect with my friend.  I hope some of you are
still interested.)

I have a friend who works for PBS in Philadelphia (Early Childhood
Education department).  This individual also had the experience of
interning at Sesame Workshop.  She helped to clear up a few issues about
both funding and content of Sesame Street.

All content is controlled by Sesame Workshop.  The writers for the show are
all adult comedy writers.  After the sketches are written, they are
reviewed by a research section of the group for content and child
development accuracy.  The individuals in research are people accustomed to
backing their content concerns with specific research study examples.  Our
best advocates for change in content (i.e. bottle reference removal) would
be the research department, so any letter writing campaign should focus on
them.  It would help the process greatly if studies to support our
collective objection to bottles were included.

To make this even more difficult, Sesame Street continuousley re-uses
sketches from years past interlaced with new material.  This is why we keep
seeing the "Elmos' Bottle World" sketch years after it was actually
created.  If one could get the official sketch number, that would be the
clearest way to voice our objections.  Sesame Workshop has no control over
when the episodes are aired so detailing the date and time of your local
station would be of no use to them.

Unfortunately, the research department does not usually write any of the
segments.  So to have a segment about breastfeeding, one needs to target
writers.  The writers have no background in child development and are soley
interested in the entertainment value of the show.  As a result, they would
be a much harder group of people to convince.  However, if one
could "convert" a few of those people, we might have a better shot at
getting a segment or two in about breastfeeding into the show.

The funding is a convoluted issue.  Sesame Workshop gets their own funding
and then sells the Sesame Street episodes to PBS.  This is why "Arthur"
(who is funded by Nestle; I just hate all of those commercials for Libby's
Juicy-Juice)does not have the same sponsors as Sesame Street.

PBS gets funding on a national level and in turn individual PBS stations
get funding locally.  So to effectively change PBS, one needs to do both
national and local letter writing.  My friend was fairly certain that all
PBS stations carried Sesame Street and Arthur as well.

It might be best to make mount two campaigns.  One directly to Sesame
Workshop about content and another to PBS (both nationally and locally)
about funding for their programs.  I do not have children (yet) so I do not
regularly watch either Sesame Street or Arthur but I would be happy to help.

I hope those of you eager to change PBS for the better find this
information useful.

Charity Pitcher-Cooper BSN, RN

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