This is a "pitch" video from back when Jim Henson and George Schlatter were trying to sell The Muppet Show to CBS. It stars a character named Leo (voiced by Henson) who'd previously appeared in projects Henson's company did like sales training films, and though it's very funny, it did not result in CBS buying the program. Neither did any other network and later, sans Schlatter, it wound up in syndication where it was a tremendous success.
Granted, this is hindsight but I don't think it's surprising that this reel failed to sell the product. The network execs to whom it was addressed already knew the credits of Mssrs. Henson and Schlatter and didn't doubt that those two, individually or collectively, could produce three minutes of funny stuff. What the suits probably wanted to know was what The Muppet Show would be: What's the format? Who'll be on it? What would a typical episode be like? This pitch told them none of that. Presumably, Henson and Schlatter submitted other material, verbal and written, that would convey all that…but this pitch just sounds like empty hype for an undefined product.
Years ago, I worked with a gentleman named Kim LeMasters who had been for a few years, the guy at CBS you pitched your show to if you wanted to sell a prime-time show to that network. He was out of that job by the time I worked with him but willing to discuss it. I asked him how often someone had walked in, pitched him something and he knew on the spot he wanted to buy it. He said it had happened twice. He'd purchased many shows but only two had been first-round knockouts.
One was when Barry Kemp walked in with Newhart — the series set at the inn in Vermont. Kim said, appoximately, "He had Bob Newhart and he had the perfect format with everything all worked-out." The other show was Magnum, P.I. and I'm not sure if Tom Selleck was attached at that point but Kim said the pitch was very complete with all the regular characters clearly defined and a good handle on the kind of stories that would be done. Obviously, there was also a lot of confidence in those who'd be producing and writing…but one of the things that had impressed Kim was a lack of hard sell. The pitchers had not come in and said, "This is going to be a huge hit." Almost everyone says that and if you hear pitches all day, as network execs do, you tend to get sick of that and to just tune it out.
I suspect Henson and Schlatter intended the following as a parody of the kind of thing they knew their target audience (i.e., the CBS brass) heard ad nauseam. But maybe it didn't come off that way. Fortunately, the idea refused to die, moving way past material like this…