Michael Davis, author of Street Gang: The Complete Guide to Sesame Street, joins the show to talk about Muppets. And TV. And a whole lot more.

Davis was a senior editor at TV Guide for nearly a decade so we start with a look at that publication, compared to what’s currently going on in the newspaper industry. Remember when cable providers first gave us that antiquated Channel Listing option? Well, that basically made TV Guide obsolete as a publication. We ask Davis, who went through that transition, how it compares to what the newspapers are currently facing.

Nick brings up the fact that TV Guide has always been a collector’s item as much as an actual guide to television and we talk about some of the projects Davis has worked on (including huge projects with The Simpsons and Star Trek). We also get our inner geek on to talk about Battlestar Gallactica a bit. Davis said he loved covering shows that others at TV Guide didn’t want to cover:

1. “It was so much fun, man. I covered Scratch and Burp TV at TV Guide. All the shows that the women and the gay guys on the staff didn’t want to cover…I wanted them.  I had the best time covering an area of television that appealed to me. I was sort of the Designated Heterosexual at TV Guide – the DH – so I got to write to write about things that were of interest to me, and actually children’s television is an interest of mine.”
   

We talk a lot about the future of media on this show. Who better to ask about the future of TV than a guy who has covered it for more than a decade. With 500 channels, and YouTube and Hulu and video podcasts, what will TV be like in five or ten years? Will TV as we know it really even exist? Will our idea of programming our own 24 hours actually come to fruition?

Davis is also a recovering sports writer, working at several papers including the Chicago Sun-Times as a sports broadcasting columnist. We ask if he ever had interaction with Jay Mariotti in a sauna (thankfully, no). We talk about covering a sports media beat (a little different now with how much stuff gets on the internet instantly) and he even gives us a little breakdown of the Final Four. Oh, and we ask if he wishes he could have his column back, if only to write about Clark Kellogg’s comparison of Danny Green to Baking Soda. You can take the guy out of sportswriting....

Okay, on to the book.

Of all the things in television, why did Davis pick Sesame Street for his first book?

1. 
   

2. “I loved working with pre-school children. They are my favorite form of pond life. Then, at TV Guide I wrote a piece for the 35th Anniversary of Sesame Street. And I really got into it. I tend to over-prepare and over-report and over-obsess. And I started looking for THE history book of Sesame Street – you know, the great book – only to find that it hadn’t been written.
   

1. “So as I was completing this story for TV Guide, I got to the last paragraph and I had a tear running down my face. And I thought ‘what the hell is this about?’”
   

2. 
   

The book starts with a huge punch in the face as we’re immediately walking to Jim Henson’s funeral. The story of Sesame Street, quite literally in the case of the book, begins and ends with Henson and the Muppets. People know what the man means to me, but what does Henson mean to Davis...and the world...over the last 40 years?

If it begins and ends with Henson, the middle is full of stories from many different people from all walks of life. This book is as thoroughly researched as and I’ve seen. We ask Davis is there was a story he heard during the interview process that he said, ‘I didn’t know this. It MUST go in the book?’ He talks about the importance that Jon Stone, another name you may never know, had on the show.

Again, with more than 100 interviews (I read somewhere that said more than 200) conducted and profiles on at least 20 different people throughout the book, was it difficult to weave things together and how did he decide what made the book and what didn’t?

(For those who have read the book, I do ask Davis his reasoning for spending a lot of time about the lives of some of the main players before 1969 -- what got them to Sesame Street -- while the time of my youth --  80s and 90s --seemed glossed over a bit).

People think of children’s TV and imagine a world of zaniness and fun with some learning mixed in. But it’s TV. Is it as cutthroat as the rest of the TV business? More?

This leads to an introduction of the woman behind Sesame Street, Joan Ganz Cooney. Before I read the book, her name didn’t mean anything to me. But she’s basically responsible for my childhood. Her story throughout the book is amazing, and Davis gives us a capsule of that for the show.

Last, the subhead of Davis’ book is “The Complete History of Sesame Street” but I watch the show every day with my daughter and it’s as good as I remember it. Everyone from the beginning has either passed on or retired except for 75-year old Carroll Spinney, who still performs as Big Bird and Oscar every single day. But is the book the Complete HIstory? It’s been around for 40 years...can this show be around forever?

For the sake of our children’s children, let’s hope so.

Thank you for listening to this. Go get the book.

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