Ron Hull knew PBS was on to something with its new children's show when he received a call about it a few weeks after it debuted in November 1969.

The woman, who hailed from "some place in Nebraska," was upset because "Sesame Street" featured African-American and other minority children.

She told Hull, a former programmer at NET Television and now a special adviser to the network, that those kids were going to start thinking they were just as good as the white kids.

True story.

"I was so stunned," he recalled. "I said to her, 'That's the point, and isn't it wonderful?' She hung up.

"We've come a long ways from there."

Tomorrow, "Sesame Street" celebrates its 40th anniversary on the air. Nobody is happier than Hull, who watched it evolve on the public network.

"To be honest, when I saw the initial telecast, I remember thinking we had never seen anything like it before," he said.

"I know I felt initially that the work was just wonderful," he said. "I was a little skeptical it was going to work."

He trusted television producer Joan Ganz Cooney, who developed the show featuring Muppets who not only ate

cookies and lived in garbage cans but taught children how to count and read and respect one another.

"I think it connected so well because its genesis, its development process and its production process was so steeped in research, from psychologists to educators to musicians, you name it," Hull said.

Parents came to trust the program because, Leta Powell Drake said, they knew what to expect.

Drake knows a few things about children's programs, having hosted one for a number of years as Kalamity Kate on KOLN/KGIN-TV's "Cartoon Corral."

"The characters are so charming," she said. "Children are not threatened by them, and they obviously relate to them. Each program is a learning situation, but (children) are having so much fun, they don't even know they're being taught."

"Sesame Street" never became dated. Other children's shows, from "Captain Kangaroo" to "Rugrats," have come and gone, but Big Bird is still alive and well.

"Their approach is so intelligent and thorough, and it continues to this day," Hull said. "Our children deserve this kind of preparation of material that they take into their little brains."

Reach Jeff Korbelik at 473-7213 or jkorbelik@journalstar.com.