Sesame Workshop: ‘Big Bird lives on;’ we receive ‘very little funding from PBS’

Before Mitt Romney said he was going to stop the subsidy to PBS, even though he likes Big Bird, at the first presidential debate, Sherrie Westin, executive vice president and chief marketing officer, Sesame Workshop, told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien that cuts to public broadcasting will not ‘kill Big Bird.’

Westin says, “Sesame Workshop receives very, very little funding from PBS. So, we are able to raise our funding through philanthropic, through our licensed product, which goes back into the educational programming, through corporate underwriting and sponsorship. So quite frankly, you can debate whether or not there should be funding of public broadcasting. But when they always try to tout out Big Bird, and say we’re going to kill Big Bird – that is actually misleading, because Sesame Street will be here.”

Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien airs weekday mornings from 7-9am ET on CNN.