Sesame Street co-creator Lloyd Morrisett died on Monday, January 23, 2023. His passing was reported by the Sesame Workshop, though a cause of death was not given. He was 93 years old.
Morrisett was curious about the concept of using television as an educational tool for children. He was an experimental educator working with New York public TV producer Joan Ganz Cooney, and the nonprofit Carnegie Corp. of New York. At a party, Morrisett talked to Cooney about seeing his daughter totally immersed with what she was watching on TV, and he posited the question of whether or not television could be used to educate children.
Cooney spent months traveling the country to interview teachers, child development experts, and child psychologists about the idea while Morrisett sought investors through Carnegie, the US Office of Education, and other sources. Together, they developed the Children’s Television Workshop, kicking things off in 1968, then Sesame Street debuted a year later in November 1969.
Nearly 55 years later and Sesame Street is the largest educational TV program in the world, airing in over 140 countries and reaching tens of millions of children. The show has won almost 200 Emmy awards and 5 Peabody Awards.
Morrisett was born on November 2, 1929, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, then his family moved around the country to New York City, New Jersey, and Los Angeles. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Ohio’s Oberlin College in ’51, then did graduate work in psychology at UCLA, and got a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Yale in ’56.
He taught at the University of California at Berkeley for two years, then joined Carnegie Corp. in ’59 where he initiated studies on the educational obstacles that poor and minority children faced and launched programs to help disadvantaged children.
Once Children’s Television Workshop (now the Sesame Workshop) was created, he became the chairman and served in that position until 2001. He also spent 28 years as the president of the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation, a nonprofit focused on medicine, communications, and information technology, and he was a longtime board member at internet services company, Tucows.
