- Sesame Workshop’s chief marketer, Samantha Maltin, is leaving the corporate.
- Maltin’s exit follows Sesame Workshop’s CEO change and upcoming “Sesame Avenue” revamp.
- “Sesame Avenue” might discover new streaming companions when its take care of Max ends in 2025.
Sesame Workshop is shedding its chief marketer of 5 years, Samantha Maltin, in a uncommon govt management change, the corporate confirmed to Enterprise Insider.
Maltin, who was named to the position in 2019 and appeared on Enterprise Insider’s CMOs to Watch record in 2021, was solely the second CMO in Sesame Workshop’s 50-year historical past. She left for a brand new position at St. Jude in Memphis, Tennessee, two folks aware of the matter mentioned. Her departure has not been externally introduced.
Maltin did not instantly reply to a request for remark.
It is the second large change this 12 months on the nonprofit after it named a brand new CEO in Sherrie Westin, who had been president since 2021. It additionally comes at a time of transformation. Lengthy-running “Sesame Avenue” is on the brink of roll out its largest format change since 2016, when the present went to half-hour from one hour. Beginning in 2025, this system will commerce its longstanding “journal”-style format for 2 11-minute narrative-driven segments and a brand new animated collection, “Tales From 123.”
The revamped present might even have a brand new residence. “Sesame Avenue’s” five-year rights take care of Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming service Max will finish concurrently the brand new present is about to roll out. In 2022, HBO Max (now Max) grabbed headlines when it yanked about 200 older episodes of “Sesame Avenue” as half of a bigger cost-cutting transfer. Sesame Workshop is within the midst of negotiations with distributors for the present.
With beloved IP that appeals to a number of generations, “Sesame Avenue” may very well be engaging to different streamers anticipating tried-and-true content material. It might discover a number of licensing companions, which is turning into extra frequent as studios transfer away from the times of promoting their content material outright to Netflix and different streamers. Episodes additionally air on PBS after a delay, an association that is more likely to proceed.
Conventional youngsters’ TV and films face headwinds, nonetheless, as youngsters more and more desire homegrown reveals on YouTube. Revenue pressures even have media firms pulling again on creating content material for teenagers.
Maltin beforehand labored at Schireson, an information science technique agency — which has since joined the promoting firm Recognized — that gave her a bonus in working with Sesame’s chief know-how officer on knowledge technique. Maltin is an alum of A+E Networks, Nickelodeon, and Viacom.
She additionally helped create a “Sesame Avenue” model picture celebrating its fiftieth anniversary.
