"To be called an Oscar nominee pales next to being able to call myself a Sesame Street animator."
- Paul Fierlinger

"What [MTV] should be lauded for is that it has increased the visual sensibilities, the visual palettes of an entire generation. It's expanded how people see. So, that's a great thing."
- Candy Kugel, Buzzco and Associates

Jane Aaron's X Song uses stop-motion animation to introduce Sesame Street viewers to, [what else?] the letter "X." © CTW

Despite a prosperity of pages devoted to animation over the last decade, few have dealt with the enormous influence and impact of the Children's Television Workshop (CTW) and MTV on the animation industry, and indeed, the media industry as a whole. Long before the likes of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network were creating artist driven shows, MTV was producing hip interstitials created by independent animators. Long before MTV, CTW was also complimenting their shows with independent animation. Now, CTW and MTV might seem like strange bedfellows, but they actually have a great deal in common. From a negative perspective, both have been routinely criticized by artists for their stinginess, and for years have been accused of stunting the attention spans of the younger generation. But without a doubt, their positive impact on the animation industry outweighs the negatives. First and foremost, they were the first two companies to find consistent commercial uses for independent animators. This has had a huge impact on the animation industry in a variety of ways: it has provided much needed jobs for animators, brought their work beyond the festival circuit and to the general public, energized the New York animation scene, garnered critical respect for commercial animation, influenced the advertising and feature film industry, and arguably, paved the way for today's boom in animation.

Henry Selick created many i.d.s and shorts for MTV during the 1980s. Shown here is the stop-motion Dollhouse M (still and production shot), Contortion M, and Bathtub M. Photos courtesy of Henry Selick.

The Roots of CTW and MTV
Certainly CTW and MTV did not evolve out of thin air. UPA's limited, affordable, and simple style first made people believe that it was even possible to do animation for television. This had an enormous influence on Hanna-Barbera and Filmation, whose appropriation of UPA's style opened the doors for television animation in the 1960s, and paved the way for CTW. Fortunately, CTW adapted UPA's more positive elements. They created smart films, like Gerald McBoing Boing, that appealed to children, but did not talk down to them. UPA, along with Paramount, who Linda Simensky of Cartoon Network says, was "more UPA than UPA," had been producing independent inspired shorts thirty years before CTW. In fact, the UPA influence extended right down to CTW hiring UPA people like Howard Beckerman and John Hubley.