USA Today tries to answer the question posed by precocious American preschoolers: Will Big Bird go away?

Big Bird with Michelle Obama and Billy Eichner. Photo via Wikimedia Commons
Big Bird with Michelle Obama and Billy Eichner. Photo via Wikimedia Commons
Short answer: No, since HBO will continue to air “Sesame Street” no matter what happens to White House efforts to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

But that leaves open the issue of the 8-foot-2 icon vanishing from outlets that many poor children watch.

“In 2015, Sesame Street’s parent nonprofit, Sesame Workshop, signed a five-year funding agreement with the cable entertainment giant that gives HBO exclusive rights to new episodes. PBS gets the episodes nine months later, for free,” USA Today noted.

“But if individual PBS stations can’t afford to keep the lights on, the cuts could keep Big Bird & Friends from populating your children’s daytime TV schedules, advocates say.”

PBS President Paula Kerger told The Washington Post: “A number of those stations would go off the air. It’s an existential question for many of them.”

Fans and foes of Big Bird — whose birthday was Monday — debated the existential question as well.

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