LOS ANGELES: It is not easy being green for Kermit the Frog.
But is it devastating for Steve Whitmire, who was let go after nearly three decades as the voice and puppeteer for The Muppet Show’s beloved green creature.
Whitmire, in a blog post, said he was “devastated to have failed” Muppets founder and mentor Jim Henson.
“For me the Muppets are not just a job, or a career, or even a passion. They are a calling, an urgent, undeniable, impossible to resist way of life,” Whitmire wrote in his blog, a day after his firing was announced. “This is my life’s work since I was 19 years old. I feel that I am at the top of my game, and I want all of you who love the Muppets to know that I would never consider abandoning Kermit.”
Kermit the Frog was Henson’s signature character and the centerpiece of the Muppets franchise from 1955 until Henson’s death in 1990, and Whitmire was chosen by Henson’s son to take over. He also provided the voice of Sesame Street favorite Ernie, of Bert and Ernie fame.
Whitmire wrote in his blog that The Muppets Studio’s executives informed him that Kermit would be recast, and he has “remained silent the last nine months in hopes that the Disney company might reverse their course”.
“I have experienced every possible emotion since October 2016, when I received a phone call from The Muppets Studio’s executives to say they were recasting.”
“Through a new business representative, I have offered multiple remedies to their two stated issues which had never been mentioned to me prior to that phone call. I wish that we could have sat down, looked each other in the eye, and discussed what was on their minds before they took such a drastic action.”
Matt Vogel, who voiced Kermit imitator Constantine in 2014 film Muppets Most Wanted, will first be heard as Kermit — the long-time love of Miss Piggy — in a Muppets Thought of the Week video next week.
Muppet’s Kermit the Frog to have a new voice
Muppet’s Kermit the Frog to have a new voice
Eurovision Sport, Camb.ai to provide live subtitling for Paralympic Winter Games
- Partnership aims to increase accessibility for all audiences
- Milano Cortina Games run from Friday to March 15
LONDON: Eurovision Sport, the European Broadcasting Union’s free-to-air streaming platform, will provide live and on-demand subtitling for coverage of the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games in partnership with AI language company Camb.ai
The service will run across all competition days, allowing viewers to stream all six Paralympic Winter Games sports on Eurovision Sport with real-time subtitles. The Games open on Friday and run through March 15.
Camb.ai will supply contextual speech-to-text transcription for both live and catch-up coverage, which the organizers said would support accessibility without altering the editorial integrity of broadcasts.
Eurovision Sport Managing Director Alan Fagan said the aim was to make the Games available to “the widest possible audience,” by scaling up digital accessibility across every event on the platform.
The initiative forms part of the EBU’s most extensive digital coverage of a Paralympic Winter Games to date and complements member broadcasters’ linear output.
It also reflects a wider industry push to make live sport easier to follow for viewers watching without sound, people with hearing impairments and audiences consuming content on demand.
Camb.ai’s Chief Technology Officer Akshat Prakash said the company was proud to deepen its partnership with Eurovision Sport, describing the platform as a leader in applying new technology to sports coverage.
The two organizations began working together in 2024, when they delivered what they described as Europe’s first AI-powered real-time translated sports commentary during European Athletics events.
