Editing Sesame Workshop (section)

=== Background ===
During the late 1960s, 97% of all American households owned a television set, and preschool children watched an average of 27 hours of television per week.<ref>{{cite journal | last = Hellman | first = Peter | title = Street Smart: How Big Bird & Company Do It | journal = New York Magazine | volume = 20 | issue = 46 | page = 52 | date = 23 November 1987 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=KOUCAAAAMBAJ&q=sesame%20street&pg=PA48 | issn = 0028-7369 | access-date = 18 November 2019}}</ref> Early childhood educational research at the time had shown that when children were prepared to succeed in school, they earned better grades and learned more effectively. Children from low-income families, however, had fewer resources than children from higher-income families to prepare them for school. Research had shown that children from low-income, minority backgrounds tested "substantially lower"<ref>Palmer & Fisch in Fisch & Truglio, p. 5</ref> than middle-class children in school-related skills, and that they continued to have educational deficits throughout school.<ref>{{cite book | last = Lesser | first = Gerald S. | author2 = Joel Schneider | editor = Shalom M. Fisch | editor2 = Rosemarie T. Truglio | title = "G" is for Growing: Thirty Years of Research on Children and Sesame Street | chapter-url = https://archive.org/details/gisforgrowingthi00shal/page/26 | chapter-url-access = registration | publisher = Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers | year = 2001 | location = Mahweh, New Jersey | page = [https://archive.org/details/gisforgrowingthi00shal/page/26 26] | isbn = 0-8058-3395-1 | chapter = Creation and Evolution of the ''Sesame Street'' Curriculum }}</ref> The topic of developmental psychology had grown during this period, and scientists were beginning to understand that changes of early childhood education could increase children's cognitive growth.

[[File:Joan Ganz Cooney.JPG|thumb|upright|alt=Black and white photo of a smiling woman about fifty years of age and wearing a jacket and tied-up scarf|CTW Co-founder Joan Ganz Cooney, in 1985]]
[[File:Lloyd Morrisett and his birthday cupcakes.jpg|thumb|right|alt=White male in his 70s, wearing a dark blue sweater, to the left of a woman holding a tray of Cookie Monster cupcakes|Co-founder Lloyd Morrisett, in 2010]]
In the winter of 1966, [[Joan Ganz Cooney]] hosted what she called "a little dinner party"<ref name="interview-3">{{cite AV media | people =Shirley Wershba (host) | date =27 April 1998 | title ="Joan Ganz Cooney, Part 3" | medium = video clip | url = http://emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/joan-ganz-cooney | access-date = 18 November 2019
 | publisher =Archive of American Television}}</ref> at her apartment near [[Gramercy Park]]. Attending were her husband Tim Cooney, her boss Lewis Freedman, and Lloyd and Mary Morrisett, whom the Cooneys knew socially.<ref>Davis, p. 12</ref> Cooney was a producer of documentary films at New York public television station WNDT (now [[WNET]]), and won an [[Emmy Award|Emmy]] for a documentary about poverty in America.<ref>O'Dell, p. 68</ref> [[Lloyd Morrisett]] was a vice-president at [[Carnegie Corporation of New York|Carnegie Corporation]], and was responsible for funding educational research, but had been frustrated in his efforts because they were unable to reach the large numbers of children in need of early education and intervention.<ref>Davis, p. 15</ref> Cooney was committed to using television to change society, and Morrisett was interested in using television to "reach greater numbers of needy kids".<ref>Davis, p. 61</ref> The conversation during the party, which according to writer Michael Davis was the start of a five-decade long professional relationship between Cooney and Morrisett, turned to the possibilities of using television to educate young children.<ref>Davis, p. 16</ref> A week later, Cooney and Freedman met with Morrisett at the office of Carnegie Corporation to discuss doing a feasibility study for creating an educational television program for preschoolers.<ref>Morrow, p. 47</ref> Cooney was chosen to perform the study.<ref name="interview-3"/>

In the summer of 1967, Cooney took a leave of absence from WNDT, and funded by Carnegie Corporation, traveled the U.S. and Canada interviewing experts in child development, education, and television. She reported her findings in a fifty-five-page document entitled "The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education".<ref>Davis, pp. 66–67</ref> The report described what the new series, which became ''[[Sesame Street]]'', would be like and proposed the creation of a company that managed its production, which eventually became known as the Children's Television Workshop (CTW).<ref name="interview-3"/>