Practically 200 Episodes of ‘Sesame Avenue’ Vanish From HBO Max

HBO Max is basically placing its identify to the check recently.

In current weeks, as its mother or father firm Warner Bros. merged with Discovery, the service has been remodeled, as a part of the early steps in the direction of its eventual merger with the brand new Warner Bros. Discovery’s different current streaming service, Discovery+. They’ve canceled upcoming films like Batgirl, and expensive exhibits like DC’s Unusual Adventures. They’ve additionally begun flattening low-performing sequence and movies. Simply days in the past, they introduced round two dozen HBO Max originals had been getting dropped, prompting shocked and devastated tweets from lots of the creators of these exhibits.

Now the cuts have apparently hit one of many service’s most beloved exhibits. Selection stories that almost 200 episodes of Sesame Avenue have disappeared from HBO Max in current days. Right here’s the total accounting of what’s gone:

As of Friday, HBO Max listed 456 complete episodes of “Sesame Avenue,” with a variety from Seasons 1, 5 and seven and the total lineup from the newest Seasons 39-52. Of these, solely 29 are from the earliest seasons. Beforehand, the streaming service provided about 650 complete “Sesame Avenue” episodes, together with episodes from Seasons 2-4, Season 6 and people from each season between 8 and 35.

The spinoff sequence The Not-Too-Late-Present With Elmo was additionally among the many Max Originals that HBO introduced it was dropping earlier this week. Selection says the choice to pare again Sesame Avenue episodes “seems to be a part of new proprietor Warner Bros. Discovery’s belt-tightening strikes, geared toward decreasing streaming-content fee obligations.”

Sesame Avenue was one of many core titles introduced for HBO Max earlier than the service even launched. (A number of years earlier, Sesame Workshop reached a cope with HBO to premiere episodes there earlier than they debuted on its conventional dwelling on PBS.) 456 episodes continues to be fairly a bit Sesame Avenue obtainable for streaming; given the present’s audience, I discover it arduous to consider any of the youngsters who depend on HBO Max to look at Sesame Avenue would even discover the distinction. Nonetheless, the quantity of stuff being pulled down from HBO Max will not be nice information. What makes a streaming service interesting is the scale of its catalogue, and HBO Max has constantly had one of many largest since its launch. One hopes that can proceed to be the case when the mud from this company merger clears.

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