it, "a realistic city street, complete with peeling paint, alleys, front stoops, and metal trash cans along the sidewalk". Director Jon Stone was convinced that in order for inner-city children to relate to Sesame Street, the show had to be set in a familiar place. Despite its urban setting, the producers depicted the world in a positive way—both realistically and as it could be. They attempted to present "an idealized world of learning and play", and from a child's perspective. Director Jim Martin called Sesame Street "an urban show kids could relate to" and "a reality show with a sprinkling of fantasy". When Sesame Street was developed, most researchers assumed that young children did not have long attention spans, so the new show's producers were concerned that an hour-long show would not hold their audience's attention. As a result, each episode was structured like a magazine, which made it possible for the producers to create a mixture of styles, paces, and characters. The structure allowed them to have flexibility, meaning that segments were dropped, modified, or added without affecting the rest of the show. As Lesser stated, "It is unlikely that any other approach would have provided enough room to present material on the wide range of goals we had selected". Producers found that if the show's segments were sufficiently varied in character, content, style, pace, and mood, children's attention was able to be sustained throughout each episode. The show's magazine format accommodated both the curriculum and its demanding production schedule. "Street scenes" At first, the show's "street scenes", which referred to the action taking place on the brownstone set, were not story-based. Instead, they consisted of individual segments connected to the curriculum and interrupted by inserts, or puppet skits, short films, and animations. By 1990, research had shown that children were able to follow a story, so the street scenes were changed to depict storylines. The writers presented a story, separated by several inserts, dispersed throughout the hour-long show. Although the stories were usually about 10–12 minutes in length, it would take 45 minutes to tell them. According to writer Tony Geiss, the addition of storylines changed the nature of the show. During Sesame Streets development in 1968, the producers followed the recommendation of child psychologists, who advised them to not allow the direct interaction of the human actors and Muppets because the experts were concerned it would confuse