(AP) — Big Bird is leaving Sesame Street!
Wait. Calm down.
That’s just what the show’s fine feathered friend decides at the beginning of the “Sesame Street” season opener earlier this month — an episode which marked the show’s 40th anniversary on the air.
A rapping real-estate agent pitches him on migrating to a new habitat (“habitat,” the episode’s “Word on the Street”). After sizing up a beach and a swamp for his new habitat, Big Bird chooses a rain forest.
But then he comes to his senses with a musical number.
“Sesame Street is my habitat!” he sings. “Sesame Street is my home!”
Indeed, Big Bird — that towering, yellow-feathered 6-year-old — has been calling Sesame Street home for four decades, ever since the show premiered on Nov. 10, 1969.
Now, 40 years later, he remains an essential member of the flock. He is still brought to life by Caroll Spinney, who also plays trash-can denizen Oscar the Grouch.
Hand-picked by Muppet-meister Jim Henson, Spinney was 35 when “Sesame Street” began. He turns 76 the day after Christmas. Spinney was pondering an existential question not long ago.
“If you didn’t know when you were born, how old would you think you are?” he mused. “I can apply that to Sesame Street’s longevity: It seems like years, but I’d NEVER guess 40!”
Maybe that’s because the self-renewing “Sesame Street” is forever young.
A realm of sunny days where everything’s A-OK, the series starts its new season with episode 4187, which features the letter H and, naturally, the number 40.
With it and the 25 new hours that follow, “Sesame Street” will continue to explore its chosen habitat — and experiment with how it does the job.
“It was always designed to emulate the TV-viewing environment,” says Carol-Lynn Parente, the show’s executive producer. “Back in 1969, it had a magazine format that emulated what was then on television.”
To meet expectations of its audience 40 years later, each new episode has been reformatted as an hourlong block composed of modular programming parts.
But through those changes, Spinney, who is one of but a few charter members of the show, is still on the Street. Among them: Bob McGrath (Bob) and Loretta Long (Susan), as well as camera man Frankie Biondo.
“For the first few shows, (Big Bird) was just a silly, goofy guy,” recalls Spinney. “Then one day I said, ‘Big Bird should be a kid. Forget the fact that he’s eight feet tall.’ And real children accepted him.”
Indeed, Big Bird fast became a signature figure on “Sesame Street.” Early on, he appeared solo on the cover of Time magazine, which dubbed his show “TV’s Gift to Children.”
“The head weighs about 4 1/2 pounds,” reports Spinney. “One fellow says, ‘That’s no big deal, I can do that.’ And I said, ‘All right. Let’s hold our hand up for five minutes. You don’t even have to put anything in it.’ And in a couple of minutes, he said, ‘My God!’
Last season, “Sesame Street” averaged more than 5 million viewers each week, and beyond that, logged 135 million impressions through media sources other than PBS between January and September.
After 40 years and counting (plus spelling and other explorations), on “Sesame Street” everything’s A-OK.
