Did I ever tell you folks about the time I saved Sesame Street?
Back in 2002, I was attending the University of Oregon (my second go at college, and my third school) and had the morning off from classes, and was idly flipping channels (because people used to do that) and landed on PBS as Sesame Street came on.
Now, I grew up on Sesame Street, and I’m still a big fan of the layers of humor they manage, so I figured I’d watch a bit and probably flip away if I got bored. In the street segment, Oscar the Grouch was watching some grouch TV station as it played an ad for an amusement park, something like “Sick Flags Over Yuckyworld”, and in this ad, in that early internet time, they included a URL: yuckyworld.org .
I thought this was hilarious, and particularly loved the fact that it was a .org domain, so I got on my computer to see what CTW/Sesame Workshop had put up.
They hadn’t put anything up.
They’d neglected to register the domain.
I immediately had horrific visions of what might show up there. Anybody could snap the name up. 4chan wasn’t around yet, but it was the heyday of Something Awful and rotten.com, and I had huge fears of somebody putting up some shock site just in time to hit the afternoon broadcast.
So I registered the domain myself, and within 15 minutes or so had a barebones site up, just a text affair to hold the place, explaining what had gone on and letting the showrunners know that I’d give them the site if they contacted me.
They did indeed contact me by the next day, and I arranged to transfer the domain back to them. I think the situation was that they’d intended to register the domain — the next segment was Oscar getting an adult to help him look up the site on the web, so it was intended as a teaching thing — but paperwork had gotten lost and the episode aired before the site was ready. I got some nice letters from parents thanking me for looking out for their kids, and the SesameStreet.com folks sent me a t-shirt, a mug, and one of those “autographed” photos of the Muppet cast.
So, anyway, that’s my contribution to children’s television history.
annaxmalina
izzy806
baratheonpilled
jbbartram-illu
stormborns
titsay
