PBS And The Muppets To Partner With The Wall Street Journal And HBO To Bring More Content To The Public With The Launch Of Its PBS “Passport Two” Service

Bill Maher interviewed Elmo the Muppet about the new Passport Two service partnership, PBS, HBO, the Muppets and the Wall Street Journal

Something new is coming!  A more better version of Public Broadcasting in the form of PBS’s new “Passport Two” access.

It’s been six years since PBS and all its member stations launched its “freemium” Passport service, a new membership streaming service in order to do a better job at, and bring more of its Public Broadcasting Station content to the public by providing video-on-demand to members of the public paying a subscriber’s fee.  (See: PBS Passport serves up on-demand content for public TV’s members, by Jill Goldsmith, Contributing Editor,  December 15, 2015.)

Also, at that time, in a parallel move, PBS’s Muppets inked another “freemium” deal with HBO to help bring more and better Muppet content to public broadcasting.  (See: Sesame Street Is Moving To HBO In 5-Year Deal That Will Give PBS Free Episodes, by Lynn Elber, August 13, 2015)–   Point of fact- It’s actually not correct to say it’s “PBS’s Muppets”: Though long closely associated with PBS and although Big Bird testified before Congress to protect PBS funding, PBS having been the network through which the Muppets became universally identified as the children educating, family friendly and very amusing puppets that they are, PBS does not actually own the Muppets.– The deal inked with HBO allowed the subscribers of HBO’s premium services to see newly made Muppet episodes first and then let HBO pass the episodes along for rerun on PBS air after a nine-month exclusivity window.  (See: Sesame Street's move to HBO, explained, by Emily VanDerWerff, January 16, 2016)

With the launch of its original Passport service in 2015, PBS leapt into “the age of on-demand viewing” and aimed:

to deliver a one-two punch that will dazzle station donors with significant upgrades to their digital viewing experiences. Executives also hope the new service will entice younger viewers to watch more public TV programs and become members.

Now, with new partnerships, and a pivotal partnership with the Wall Street Journal, PBS and the Muppets collaborating together will be launching their new Passport Two service to deliver more of that “one-two punch.”  It’s obviously important since digital on-demand streaming is the obvious future, the destiny that is fast replacing what used to be watched as regular television.  The freemium availability of extensive PBS content only to those who are donating as subscribers is an obvious update of traditional station contributor perks: As was noted, in 2015 when Passport was launched, “an ecstatic Daniel Greenberg, chief digital officer at New York City’s WNET, a station that piloted Passport” said that this freemium availability of the extensive PBS content only available to viewers who donate should be seen as “a contemporary version of the tote bag.”

With the help and involvement of the Wall Street Journal PBS and the Muppets will be able to produce much higher quality, better informed, and better sourced content.  Among the offerings will be upgraded nightly news programs and a regular new stock market program on the days the stock market is open.  Passport Two subscribers will be able to see the news programs live and on demand anytime thereafter.  Station contributors who continue as regular Passport station members will be able to see the news the next morning after a twelve-hour window.  News programs will be available on the air for any and all members of the public twenty-four hours after origination.  During elections, Passport Two will adhere to a generous practice now already followed by the Wall Street Journal: News content about the elections and providing people with insight and information about how they should vote will be open and supplied to all immediately.

The partnership with the Wall Street Journal is expected to bring in many new members and high donation contributors, luring them in from the Wall Street Journal’s reader base and from Wall Street and financial industry in general.  To make sure that Passport Two gets a good kick off in this regard, anyone who has paid steadily to get behind the Wall Street Journal’s paywall over the past two years will automatically be gifted a year and half of Passport Two access.  This will enure that insider conversation gets Passport Two talked about and paid attention to by those who swing power.                 

Passport Two will most times go by the simple, sweet, short name of “Passport Two,” but various times and in the smaller print on the logo for the service it will be more fully inclusive of its entire official name: “Passport Two- PBS/WSJ.”   Mr. P. Rite Gold of the Wall Street Journal said that the initials “WSJ” should implicitly be understood to represent the Wall Street Journal and its involvement, but that they would also, in the context of Passport Two, be promoting “WSJ” to mean “Wellness and Social Justice,” a focal mission of the service.

Passport Two logo- "WSJ"= "Wall Street Journal" and "Wellness and Social Justice"

Concept and design plans for the Passport Two service were developed with seed money from the Wallace and Pace Summer Foundation.  Wally Summer Jr, who now heads that foundation said that denizens of Wall Street would definitely understand the intended Passport Two set up without any problem.  Summer said that on Wall Street, where everyone is welcome to invest, the value of timely information and the ability to act on it quickly is well understood.  That was why, he said, Wall Street firms were willing to pay exorbitantly for computers with downtown Manhattan locations whose connection would be micro-seconds closer to the Wall Street stock exchange in order to be able to execute trades faster.

How do Sesame Street and the Muppets benefit from the new Passport Two partnerships?  To answer that question, Elmo went on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher to engage in a charming interview with Bill Maher about what Passport Two will mean for the future of educating and communicating with kids.

Elmo explained to Maher that some of the new Muppet Passport Two productions will slant upwards to start taking in a somewhat maturing juvenile audience that’s more capable of absorbing the kind of content that Wall Street Journal has extraordinary mastery of.  To this end, Sesame Street’s Muppets world will introduce a new character, Alfalfa, whose most distinguishing  characteristic will be his funny pubescent Muppet voice crack. (The Muppets recently acquired the rights of the Hal Roach Studio “Our Gang,” “Little Rascal” films from ViacomCBS and Sonar Entertainment.  That means the Little Rascals are now also indirectly owned by Disney, which acquired the Muppets in February of 2004.  Muppeteer Jim Henson, their creator, died May of 1990.)

Elmo told Maher that, echoing a little of the approach of the defunct “My Weekly Reader” of the days of yore, new Muppet shorts would be produced to make juveniles aware of, and conversant with, current world events and educate them about civics issues.  Elmo said that a segment was in the works titled, “Why We Should Go To War With Iran” and there was a related short feature involving a cartoon yellow submarine titled “How We Can Go To War With Iran.”  Several editors from the WSJ editorial page are volunteering their time to contribute ideas.  One short segment, focused on civics, completed with the help of the editors is already complete: “Why A Socialist Venezuela Threatens American Values.”   
 

In his interview Elmo told Bill Maher about the cartoon segment using a submarine to teach about relationships with Iran

Chuckling, Maher responded, “You Tickle me, Elmo,” an obvious indication that Maher’s Covid era challenged writers are not up to producing their best material right now.  Contributing, statements for HBO to a press release announcing Passport Two, Maher said, “HBO’s willingness to join with the Muppets, the Wall Street Journal and PBS provides a firm answer, a resounding negative answer to the question (See: Will AT&T Be Able to Handle HBO? By John Koblin, June 14, 2018) of whether ATT’s 2018 acquisition of HBO and Time Warner would result in detrimental changes to HBO.”

Maher’s press release statements asserted that with the media corporation “Game of Thrones” style wars competing for complete content dominance, ATT had been a “nonpassive corporate parent insisting that HBO must get bigger and broader.” Thus, “yes,” he said, with the acquisition “there have been changes” and “HBO has been developing less expensive, shorter length content suitable for the modern era of today’s challenged attention spans,” but that “those changes have all been good.”

PBS says that it is not the only charity participating in the Passport Two paywall project, that PBS’s own participation had induced additional partners to be included, particularly an expansion of HBO’s recent partnerships with libraries around the country that includes NYPL, the New York Public Library, and the Brooklyn Public Library.  (See: New York Public Library and HBO Partner, by Gary Price on May 29, 2018 and Brooklyn Public Library Partners With HBO To Promote HBO Subscription Content Offering “My Brilliant Friend-  “The Blue Fairy”, April, 2020)      

Explaining the Passport Two participation partnership to the NYPL trustees, NYPL president Tony Marx said “HBO is providing some great video talent” and it is providing that “great video talent” just when it’s going to be ever more important for the internet streaming and internet digital availability that, like Covid, is ushering us away from books and physical libraries.  Brooklyn Public Library spokesperson Les Izmur, said the BPL heartily agreed.

The new CEO of HBO, Constance Ailes (daughter of Roger who died in May of 2017), who was recently hired by HBO president John K. Billock to replace former CEO Richard Plepler, says HBO is jubilant about its partnering with the libraries:  “The libraries are repositories of so many stories no longer subject to copyright that, through creative retelling, we can make our own so that Passport Two will be an ever more essential part of life.”

Wally Summer of the Wallace and Pace Summer Foundation said that partnerships like these are so important to ensure that PBS will continue to be commercial free.  He noted that these partnerships were even more fruitful in that regard in that Disney, as a proud “nonpassive corporate parent was pumping even more money into the Passport Two partnerships than the Muppet episodes were costing.”  In recognition of this, PBS will run sponsorship acknowledgment spots thanking Disney with brief clips from “The Mandalorian,” “Black Panther,” “Hamilton,” and “Avengers: Infinity War,” referencing Disney’s new Disney+ steaming service.

Passport Two will launch at an initial monthly fee of just $89.  However, in a public health and cross-cultural event supporting move, the Passport Two will promote `Passport’ awareness in general by initially offering Passport Two for the reduced cost of $29 monthly for those who have obtained Covid Passports, the proof that concert and cultural event goers are going to be getting that they have been double vaccinated in order to allow then be able to resume normal cultural activities like attending the Broadway Theater when it reopens.

Not all of PBS’s content will be run exclusively behind the Passport Two paywall for prescribed windows of time: PBS’s “Frontline,” regularly a joint venture with the New York Times will continue, as always, to be available to the public from the first date of publication.  Although it will continue to be free and available as before, it will now be available through the Passport Two apps as an enticement for Passport Two membership.  The New York Times, currently uses the freemium model of allowing a certain number of articles to be read free each month, after which a subscription to the Times is needed to be able to read more.  In contradistinction, the Times/PBS “Frontline” production however has always been entirely free, permanently posted on the internet except for one episode about Israel and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

“Frontline” producers said that “Frontline’s” messages about how divided the American public is, making it impossible for our country to agree upon or effectively address issues, together with Frontline’s subtle appeals to the PBS intelligentsia in favor of war and interventionism were too valuable and important to put behind a paywall.  Times spokesperson Mimidae Passerine said that for the New Times to continue to lead the national dialogue, signaling and blessing the important narratives with what is referred to as “The Times Effect,” it was the kind of propaganda that needed to get out immediately and unimpeded.

The Passport Two service launches today, the first day of April, April 1st.