With news that HBO has negotiated a five-year deal with Sesame Workshop to broadcast Sesame Street first, and to embargo new episodes elsewhere for nine months (which would then be given free to PBS), the prospective scenarios and jokes write themselves. One envisions a new segment called You Know Nothing, John Snow. A David Milch-penned Ian McShane will now voice Oscar the Grouch, joined by his new apprentice Reek. Lena Dunham will take over Abby Cadabby’s Flying Fairy School, with comically awkward full frontal nudity from all the fairies. We’ve probably all heard that Maria is leaving Sesame Street after 44 years, but rumors have it that she does so in a gruesome “Blue Wedding” scene involving a starving Cookie Monster. Or perhaps she leaves (with Elmo, let’s hope) in a second Sudden Departure in Season 2 of The Leftovers. Today’s word is “guilt,” as introduced by special guest star Robert Durst. Bert and Ernie welcome new roommates Patrick and Frankie. Grover and Big Bird join the guys at Pied Piper. And so forth (such jokes remind me of this classic video).

But what are we to make of the deal?

Many are justifiably concerned about access for those without HBO. Sesame Street began with dreams of closing an achievement gap between middle class kids beginning school with good pre-K education, and working class kids without any such education. Thus, moving the show to the emperor of pay cable raises all sorts of concerns. See here for a smart articulation of these concerns. That said, it’s unclear as of yet how much access will be affected: if all kids can still watch later, will Sesame’s planned curriculum work at a discount nine months on? Will Sesame Workshop’s promise to produce more episodes ultimately be a net positive? Watch this space.

I’ve also heard plenty of concern being voiced about what this will do to content (see the jokes above). This concern, I believe, is unwarranted. Sure, corporate ownership affects texts, but Sesame Street isn’t a new show trying to find its feet: it’s the most successful, beloved text in American TV history. It has earned the privilege to call its own shots, and surely any deal keeps that agency alive. For what it’s worth, too, HBO doesn’t have ads, whereas PBS does (oh, okay, they’re “sponsors”), so it will actually be easier to watch Sesame Street without any ads on HBO than on PBS. HBO could undoubtedly find ways to screw the show up, but I find this highly unlikely, and if they try, surely Sesame could pack up and go elsewhere.

What worries me most is what this means for PBS, and for its other kids shows. Sesame Workshop and (before his death in 2003) Fred Rogers always provided PBS with its very best rhetorical defense, as evident when Mitt Romney’s 2012 suggestion that he’d cut PBS’ funding was popularly translated as Mitt stupidly wanting to “kill Big Bird” (see below). The GOP has long hated PBS, and regrets every tax dollar that goes to it instead of buying nuclear submarines. But they’ve never quite been able to break through the dam that is the public’s love and respect for Big Bird and friends. The dam is now gone. It is now oh-so-easy for a Republican Congress to say, “see, commercial television makes Sesame possible. Game over.” In such a scenario, Sesame Street lives on. But what’s downstream from the dam is everything else on PBS, especially all of its other non-tentpole children’s programming.

I want to temper that concern somewhat, though. As Laurie Ouellette’s brilliant Viewers Like You? does, we can and should criticize PBS from the left, not just from the right. PBS has regularly understood its remit to play programming that commercial television won’t play as a command instead to go even more highbrow, not to serve those consumers and citizens eschewed by advertiser-led programming. Along the way, it’s taken on ads, and often closely resembles that which it was meant to counter-program. When your most prominent non-kids show is a wet dream of British aristocracy sponsored by Viking River Cruises (whose website is currently proud of a “deal” that “only” costs $3762 per person, assuming double occupancy) and Ralph Lauren, your claim to carry the banner of the masses is laughable. PBS has long aspired to be HBO (even before there was an HBO!), so in some senses this custody agreement over Sesame Street shouldn’t seem so odd.

PBS’s greatest offering to American society has come from its kids programming, though, so the concern is still valid, the threat still real. Even PBS’ worst kids shows aspire to educational status. The joke that is “E/I” labeling on commercial television, wherein channels can say that anything with a happy ending is “educational” because “it teaches good morals,” is so deeply cynical, yet I’ve never found PBS cynical in this regard.

Admittedly, PBS’ educational programming isn’t the only game in town. Amazon is doing some great things, with Tumble Leaf and Annedroids, even Creative Galaxy, impressing me considerably. I was also very proud to be part of the Peabody Award jury that acknowledged Disney Junior’s Doc McStuffins for its own work. So I don’t want to overstate: even if Sesame Workshop’s deal with HBO breaks the dam, not every good, educational, important kid’s show stands to be destroyed if PBS disappears or is further commercialized. There are enough inhabitants below that dam, though, that it’s reason to worry.

It’s easy, then, to get pissed off at Sesame Workshop for this move. Personally, though, I’m inclined to say that after all they’ve done for families with televisions around the world, and after being the dam that held back the GOP’s attack on PBS for so long, it’s hard to argue that they owe us even more. They earned a right to be selfish, to think about how they – not children’s educational programming or public broadcasting writ large – will remain afloat. If there’s someone to be angry at, therefore, it’s still (1) the GOP for forcing this hand; (2) PBS for never truly being what they should’ve been in the first place, and thus for requiring Sesame Workshop and Fred Rogers to protect them from successive rounds of attacks on their funding; and (3) generations of PBS’ well-to-do “viewers like you” for demanding more British period dramas instead of realizing the channel was never meant to be there to satisfy their bourgeois needs.

A final thought on the deal, though, is about what this means for HBO. The jokes with which I began are so easy to pen because HBO’s brand identity and Sesame Street have seemed so distant from each other. HBO has put a lot of time and money into presenting themselves as the choice of discerning upper middle class adults. Indeed, a recent set of ads for HBO GO were clearly pitched at youth who thought themselves old enough for HBO’s parade of violence, sex, and profanity, and at parents hip and wise enough to realize that their kids weren’t kids any more. Thus, as much as the public discussion of this move has understandably focused on what the deal means for Sesame Street and for PBS, it’s interesting to consider this as a major shift in strategy for HBO. With the advent of HBO Now, HBO clearly has aspirations to become a premier streaming service. Netflix has its deal with Disney that will soon reap its greatest rewards; Amazon has its impressive slate of kids shows; and HBO has often had nothing remotely worthwhile for kids (Fraggle Rock ended 28 years ago). So for them to go out and buy the most famous kids show ever sends a loud message that they don’t just want to be for adults anymore. It may tell us that HBO has decided that being a streaming service heavyweight requires kids programming. Perhaps streaming services are the future and lifeblood of kid’s television; indeed, between this deal and Amazon’s interest in creating yet more high quality kids shows, clearly something is going on. But we should still worry about the coming flood that might wash away a great deal of what was PBS at its very best.

In particular, I am interested in the growth of “Appisodes”: versions of television episodes with embedded games and interactive components that allow viewer/players to interact directly with the narrative, often through mini-games or other interactive components that punctuate the episode and are required to move the story forward. Introduced with minimal fanfare, Appisodes (which I have referred to as “Merged Screen” experiences) have recently been made available through outlets like the Itunes store or Amazon. The first few appisode apps released had a number of factors in common. Disney Jr. Appisodes, (which I have written about elsewhere), Dora the Explorer Appisodes, and VeggieTale Appisodes were all extensions of broadcast television animated series targeted at pre-schoolers. However, the most recent addition, Annedroid Appisodes produced by Amazon, breaks from this formula and points to some of the broader potential—and limitations—in this new format for children’s media.

Annedroids is a part of Amazon’s effort to compete with Netflix and Hulu through Amazon Prime and the creation of original programing. Annedroids is a half-hour live action series targeted at elementary school-aged children, and follows the exploits of a young girl Anne who designs, builds, and programs large, complex, and personality-filled robots and conducts scientific experiments and solves problems with the help of her two friends Nick and Shania. Made with a combination of live-action and CGI techniques, the series incorporates a large number of scientific concepts, using the robots and CGI elements to depict dangerous and dramatic scientific experiments while still using child actors that are relatable, realistic, and differ dramatically from the glitter and glam of many Disney stars. In addition to these science-centered storylines, the main character is a young girl who has an extensive knowledge of science and a penchant for building, coding, and engineering, presenting a strong role-model for young girls.

Annedroids, therefore, seems like the perfect fit for conversion into the appisode format. The series’ focus provides the opportunity for simple coding-based mini-games or games and activities that teach scientific principles. Given the older target audience of Anendroids, one might imagine that there would be a higher level of educational content in their Appisodes. However, in practice Annedroids Appisodes only show hints of this potential. Of the first two episodes released, each included only three interactive elements/games, only one of which (in each episode) had a clear educational component. Both of these games are based around the idea of completing increasingly complex circuits. Some other games included minor educational components (like the inclusion of weather data or different kinds of animal footprints), but most were based around simple movements—chasing or running from something—or finding the right spot where something was hidden.

By looking at Annedroids Appisodes, a number of challenges, limitations, and potentialities of the form can be seen. While interactive elements can be easily incorporated into a series like Dora the Explorer or Doc McStuffins because they are animated, converting live-action content into animated games in a way that appears seamless and preserves consistent quality is much harder. This is a challenge that must be resolved in order to make Appisodes a realistic option for a broader variety of content. How to incorporate interactive content in a way that authentically adds value and to the episode and is fun and engaging is another challenge, one that the distinctions between the Annedroids Appisodes and previous iterations places further into context.

Amazon’s stake in selling not only their content but their platforms to consumers makes their children’s content a strong site for considering the potential of appisodes for both creative-storytelling (lauded by Annedroids creator J.J. Johnson) and interactivity. With initiatives like Kindle Free Time, part of Amazon’s pitch to families is its ability to curate media content so children only have access to “age-appropriate” media and can be limited in terms of time spent on non-educational content. While series have only just begun exploring how children’s established media habits—including repetitive viewing and viewing on mobile devices—and access to new devices can allow for new forms of storytelling/media interaction, the themes and limited interactive elements of Annedroid Appisodes is an important case study in considering the limits places on such efforts.

Media is a significant part of many children’s lives, and how to encourage children to interact with this media in creative, playful, and even educational way represents an important avenue for parents and scholars to consider. Appisodes represent the possibility of incorporating the kinds of interactive learning studied and promoted in other media such as video games into children’s consumption of television content. For distributors like Amazon who are presenting their platform as a better alternative for many parents, explicitly activating the educational content potential of Appisodes can help to differentiate them and garner positive attention as the educational content of Annedroids itself has done. As a scholar and an aunt of two young girls, considering how a platform that is only beginning to take shape might be developed in a way that increases the play, interactivity, and educational potential of media presents an important opportunity to look at the growth of new media as an opportunity to develop the best aspects of media designed for children, not as a threat to children it is sometimes framed. As a fledgling format, Appisodes may have not reached this potential, but as the format grows parents, educators, and children’s media scholars will have the opportunity to explore what it does well, what it struggles with, and how we can advocate for the value of merging video and interactive content in children’s media’s future.