History of Sesame Street including changing its traditional magazine format to a narrative format. Because of the popularity of the Muppet Elmo, the show incorporated a popular segment known as "Elmo's World". "Sesame Street" has won eight Grammys and over a hundred Emmys in its history—more than any other children's show. In the late 1960s, 97% of all American households owned a television set, and preschool children watched an average of 27 hours of television per week; programs created for them were widely criticized for being too violent and for reflecting commercial values. Producer Joan Ganz Cooney called children's programming a "wasteland", and she
Elmo the Musical ages of 3–4[2], leaving the "Elmo's World" segment as the youngest-skewing portion of the program, something Parente wished to change even before production halted. In June 2011, Joey Mazzarino and the other writers began developing new ideas for the new segment. One idea was to have Elmo go on road trips using his tricycle. Mazzarino stated Elmo's character was all about his excited view of the world and large imagination and they decided to go with an idea based on those characteristics. The idea of a musical segment came around and with the success of musical programs like "High School