Elmo has his own 15 mintue segment at the end of Sesame Street. Kids today don't have the patience or the attention span to watch a show at a slower pace such as Mr. Rogers because their parents give them iPhones and other garbage at such a young age. Even Mr. Rogers was replaced by a cartoon of Daniel Tiger from Mr. Rogers. Why not just show the kids re-runs of the real Mr. Rogers?
Sesame Street has always been geered towards inner city kids so I guess they have to satisfy that type of attention span. Even the Israeli version for a while was trying to have Jews be friends with Arabs and had Arab puppets. It reminds me of an old JTF article about how in South Africa they had a puppet that had AIDS with the caption that of course they wouldn't make the puppet black.