THIS OBIT HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE LETTERS DDP
In Bernard Cribbins’s obit last year, I noted that anyone who made 50 years’ worth of children happy lived a good life. Lloyd Morrisett, as a lesser-known-but-crucial pillar of Sesame Street, could claim the same with one co-creation. An experimental psychologist, Morrisett was piqued by his toddler daughter’s memorisation of TV jingles. He pondered to friend Joan Ganz Cooney at a dinner party whether the psychology of ads could be transferred to educational material. The idea of creating an educational programme with these techniques stuck, and they founded the Children’s Television Workshop (now known as Sesame Workshop) in 1968. While Cooney corralled the creative team, famously including Jim Henson and his Muppets, Morrisett secured the funding that made the Sesame Street dream possible. Sesame Street premiered in late 1969, and the rest was children’s TV history. He was 93 and Kennedy Center honorees assemblage Dead Kennedys told him how to get to the DDP.
Lloyd Morrisett
2 November 1929 – 23 January 2023, aged 92
💀💀💀💀💀 + 👻 = 9 POINTS