The Count is about to count his way to a milestone.
Sesame Street is about 22 million views away from becoming the first nonprofit organization and the first U.S. children's company to reach one billion views on YouTube, Geekosystem reported. At press time, the channel's videos have 978,247,378 total views.
"It blows me away to think about how popular and strong a platform (YouTube) has become for us," Terry Fitzpatrick, executive vice president of content and distribution for Sesame Workshop, told the Associated Press.
They want the fans and viewers to keep watching their videos in order to get them past that one billion hurdle, but there's only so many times we can watch "Upside Downton Abbey" or share our cookies with the Cookie Monster in one sitting.
So, as some parents do with their kids, Sesame Street came up with a little bribe to get us to do what they want: Get us those last 22 million views and we'll release a "top secret video."
The announcement came via a YouTube video posted to the channel on Thursday and features Telly Monster discovering the top secret video as he scrolls through the Sesame Street YouTube channel.
"It's a top secret video!" Telly exclaims. "I have to watch a top secret video!"
To his dismay, he finds that he is unable to watch the top secret video and is greeted with a message that says, "ACCESS DENIED. This Sesame Street video is currently unavailable. It cannot be accessed until the Sesame Street Channel has reached 1,000,000,000 views."
Throughout the video, there is a pop-up on the bottom of the screen (reminiscent of the pop-up ads that usually appear on videos) that shows SesameStreet has achieved 97 percent of their goal as of the video's release.
In order to reach that goal—and unlock the top secret video—Telly Monster needs your help to hit that goal and help Sesame Street continue their mission to educate children around the world.
There's no indication on what the top secret video will be, and the only clue, if we are to take it from Telly's message, is that the video clocks in at 5:15.
If that's the case, that probably rules out a Sesame StreetHarlem Shake video.
They could even release a video showing the Count counting to one billion. I'd still watch.
Photo via SesameStreet/YouTube