Chinese VoD firms visit Sesame Street

Sesame Street’s Oscar the Grouch

Sesame Workshop, the non-profit educational organisation behind classic kids’ show Sesame Street, has forged partnerships that will see its flagship series air on three Chinese online services.

Baidu’s iQIYI, Tencent Video and Alibaba’s Tmall Box will all make the international version of Sesame Street available along with other spin-offs, which will be dubbed into Mandarin Chinese.

Tencent will also air The Furchester Hotel, a coproduction between Sesame Workshop and CBeebies that debuted in 2014, along with Elmo’s World, Play With Me, and Let’s Celebrate Chinese New Year, a special series coproduced with CCTV. The same content will also be available on Alibaba Group’s VoD service.

Shirley Yi Zhu, Sesame Workshop’s global VP and executive director for China, said: “We have a strong network of partners – Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba – that have similar missions and who are offering an engaging content experience that extends the laughter and learning of Sesame Street to families throughout China.”

Sesame Workshop recently signed its first video-streaming deal in the territory with Chinese IPTV platform BesTV, while US premium cablenet HBO became the unlikely home to the show in August after securing exclusive first-run rights to its next five seasons.