The Disney Channel will be unscrambled for basic-cable-television subscribers for two events this month featuring teachers and children.
On Nov. 19 at 7 P.M., Eastern time, the Walt Disney Company’s fourth annual “American Teacher Awards’’ will be telecast live from Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla.
The annual special honors 36 teachers in 12 subject categories, with an outstanding teacher chosen in each subject and a single “outstanding teacher of 1993'’ chosen from among those finalists.
Disney typically enlists a bevy of Hollywood stars to serve as presenters for the Academy Awards-style ceremony. This year’s show is scheduled to include such performers as Tony Danza, Susan Dey, Marlo Thomas, and Sinbad.
The Disney Channel will repeat the special several times over the next year, including Nov. 27 at 1 P.M. and Dec. 5 at 7 P.M., Eastern and Pacific time.
That same weekend, Nov. 19-21, Disney will bring some 20,000 children to its theme parks in Florida, California, France, and Japan for a celebration of the proposed National Children’s Day, which would be Nov. 21.
The weekend’s events are to include a forum on children’s issues co-sponsored by the Washington-based Children’s Defense Fund. The First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has been invited to participate.
The children’s forum will be broadcast live on the Disney Channel on Nov. 20, with a tentative starting time of 4 P.M., Eastern time.
Mrs. Clinton will be among the guest stars to appear during the 25th season of “Sesame Street,’' which debuts Nov. 22 on the Public Broadcasting Service.
The respected children’s show will mark its anniversary season with an expanded set and new characters. The actress Ruth Buzzi joins the cast as the owner of a thrift shop whose items all have fairy-tale backgrounds. Several new Muppet characters will work and reside at the Furry Arms Hotel on the new set.
Another new character is Celina, a Filipino-American who runs a dance studio. She is representative of the show’s focus on Asian-Americans this season.
The Children’s Television Workshop, the producer of the show, has enlisted an Asian-American advisory board to help its writers and other staff members develop the theme.
--MARK WALSH
