"Sesame Street," which is celebrating its 40th anniversary, is not just a good show; it's good for you, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison media experts.

"When it comes to educational benefits, the results have been overwhelmingly positive," says Karyn Riddle, an assistant professor of journalism and mass communication. Riddle notes the PBS program is "the most heavily researched show in the history of television."

"There are a number of longitudinal studies looking at kids and how viewing 'Sesame Street' at age 3 is associated with doing better in kindergarten at age 5," adds Louise Mares, a UW-Madison associate professor of communication science. "And those kids who watched 'Sesame Street' still were doing better years later in high school."

The show's approach to capturing kids' interest was calculated. "People started noticing that when children watched television, they were paying more attention to the commercials than the program," says Joanne Cantor, who is director of UW-Madison's Center for Communication Research. "Kids were learning commercial jingles by heart. So people started wondering if they could find ways to grab kids' attention and help them learn."

In 1966, the Carnegie Institute hired TV producer Joan Ganz Cooney to develop ways to use media to prepare young children for school. More specifically, says Mares, the idea was to put together a new show that would close the preparedness gap prior to kindergarten between students from wealthier families - who typically were able to attend a quality preschool - and those youngsters whose parents were less well-off.

"The thinking was that if kids could come to kindergarten ready to go, they'd have a better chance of succeeding in school," says Mares, who worked as an adviser earlier this year with writers and researchers from the Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind the show today.

Thanks to an $8 million grant from the Carnegie Institute, Cooney created the Children's Television Workshop and proposed a program that would use humor, good writing, animation and proven teaching methods to educate preschoolers. Jim Henson and his Muppets were eventually brought into the fold in 1969 to add some pizzazz to the show, and "Sesame Street" made its debut on Nov. 10 of that year to widespread praise from both audiences and critics alike.

"'Sesame Street' used short, 30-second segments to grab kids' attention, and then they used these cute characters and jingles to help them learn," says Cantor.

Over the years, the show has used a range of interesting characters - from Big Bird, Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch to Bert, Ernie and Elmo - to tackle an ambitious range of issues. The cast of characters has dealt with birth, marriage and even death in the 1980s, when the actor who played grocer Mr. Hooper died. The "Sesame Street" gang also helped comfort a scared Elmo after he saw a fire at the same time many young viewers were trying to understand 9/11.

The cast has long featured a diverse set of human characters - something that got "Sesame Street" temporarily pulled from the air in Mississippi in 1970 after a commission there decided that state wasn't ready for the show's integrated cast.

Today, the show with a record 118 Emmy wins can be viewed in 140 countries across the globe, with an average of 5 million viewers per week in the United States.

For many parents today, like their parents before them, "Sesame Street" is viewed as a familiar safe zone in an otherwise vast wasteland of television options.

"The show was groundbreaking when it debuted, and it's endured amazingly well," says Mares. "The research generally shows 'Sesame Street' has been incredibly successful in both teaching the letters and numbers, and in reducing gaps between kids from wealthier, better-educated families and poorer, more disadvantaged families."

While many have trumpeted the positives of "Sesame Street" over the years, no one is suggesting that children start watching more television.

The Nielsen Company reported last month that kids ages 2 to 5 now watch, on average, nearly 25 hours of TV per week - with another seven-plus hours spent in front of a screen thanks to a DVR, DVD, VCR or video game console.

"Research shows that watching lots of television is related to a decrease in creativity and imaginative play," says Riddle. "So it's not good for kids to spend too much time 'vegging' in front of a television."

"Sesame Street" drew some of these same concerns over the years. Early on, some educators worried that the short segments and relatively quick pace of the show would shorten kids' attention spans and make it difficult for them to learn once they reached kindergarten.

"But that claim wasn't supported by the research," says Mares.

Others found it odd when "Sesame Street," which has put an emphasis on promoting healthy eating in recent years (Cookie Monster, for example, stuffs his face with as many fruits and veggies these days as he does sweets), brought in McDonald's as a corporate sponsor in 2003. But, as the New York Times pointed out, "unlike many fast-food ads aimed at children, these spots do not entice children with displays of a happy meal or an M&M McFlurry. Instead they showcase a child doing an art project - a little boy tracing the golden arches."

Most recently, the show has taken some heat for targeting some of its segments to those 2 and under. That's a big no-no, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommends children in that age group not watch any TV.

" 'Sesame Street is grappling with the fact that their audience is getting younger," says Cantor. "So if younger kids are watching, do you cater to them and help them learn? It's an interesting question."

Of course, if kids 2 and under are going to watch TV, "Sesame Street" might not be such a bad option. Those who plop their young kids down in front of those "Baby Einstein" DVDs might be surprised to learn that company - which is owned by Disney - is offering refunds or exchanges following a challenge to its claim the videos are educational. The move was a voluntary one by the company, and the website babyeinstein.com now states "we do not make any such claim" that its videos are educational.

"'Sesame Street' is a program that was started with the very best of intentions, and that has remained true," says Mares, a 42-year-old mother of two who grew up watching "Sesame Street" as a youth in Australia. She says that when she met some of the writers and researchers of the show earlier this year when she was advising them, "what stood out was how there are so many really, really intelligent and creative people working incredibly hard to make a great show. Now, they're not always sure what, exactly, to do. But they're sure working hard at it."

While "Sesame Street" generally remains a highly regarded program, it has some competition these days.

"I sort of feel like, ‘Gosh, they're in some danger,' " says Mares.

"They're definitely facing stiffer competition," Riddle adds. "Children just have more options. Not only are there more TV channels, but there's the Internet and more devices you can use for entertainment. And 'Sesame Street' isn't the only game in town anymore that's at least claiming to be educational."

Additionally, PBS isn't the only channel offering commercial-free viewing, as The Disney Channel and Nickelodeon both block off time in the mornings when they offer preschool programming without interruption, and Nick Jr. (formerly Noggin) is free of commercials all the time.

Nonetheless, Nov. 10 marked "Sesame Street's" 40th anniversary, and at the end of this season a whopping 4,212 episodes will have aired.

And Cantor, for one, hopes there are many more.

"The overarching thing people need to realize is how important it is to have good educational programming for kids," says Cantor. "So much on TV isn't educational. In fact, a lot of it is a waste of time and negatively impacts children. But TV can be a great medium for teaching both cognitive skills and emotional development and social development. So it's really important for a society to find a way to support something like 'Sesame Street.' Otherwise, a lot of kids are going to miss out on something important."

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