Blue's Clues

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Blue's Clues
Image:BluePeriwinkle.jpg Toys made in Blue and Periwinkle's image
Format	Children's television series
Created by	Traci Paige Johnson Todd Kessler Angela Santomero
Starring	Steve Burns (1996-2002) Donovan Patton (2002-2006)
Country of origin	Image:Flag of the United States.svg United States
No. of seasons	10
No. of episodes	140
Production
Running time	30 minutes per episode
Broadcast
Original channel	Nickelodeon and Noggin
Original run	September 8, 1996 – August 6, 2006
External links
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Blue's Clues is a children's television show, which premiered on Nickelodeon on September 8, 1996,^[1] and ran until 2006. The show has been called "one of the most successful, critically acclaimed, and ground-breaking preschool television series of all time."^[1] Its innovative use of research, technology, and interactive content has influenced its genre since its debut, including the "gold standard of preschool TV programs" that inspired it, Sesame Street.^[2] Blue's Clues is shown in over sixty countries.^[3] A spin-off called Blue's Room premiered in 2004.

1 Origin
2 Format
3 Development
4 Reception and influence
5 References
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Origin

In 1993, Nickelodeon assigned a team of its producers with the task of creating a new television program for young children, using early childhood education research, as well as what researchers have learned about the viewing and learning habits of preschoolers. The three producers, Todd Kessler, Angela Santomero, and Traci Paige Johnson (whom Brown Johnson, executive creative director at Nickelodeon, called a "green creative team")^[1], were influenced by Sesame Street but wanted to utilize research about how children learn in the thirty years since it debuted. "We wanted to learn from Sesame Street and take it one step further," Angela Santomero said.^[4]

Based upon the research of theorists like Daniel Anderson of the University of Massachusetts (who served as a consultant for Blue's Clues), Kessler, Santomero, and Johnson set out to develop a television show that took advantage of the fact that when children watch television, they are intellectually and behaviorally active. One of the things that research had discovered since Sesame Street was a change in how attention span in young children was perceived. Sesame Street was developed under the understanding that children have short attention spans; as a result, the show was designed in a magazine-like format.^[5]

Up to that point, children's educational television programs presented their content to their audience in a "one-way conversation," but Blue's Clues revolutionized the genre by inviting their involvement. Its creators believed that if children were more involved in the action of what they were viewing, they would attend to its content longer than previously expected, up to a half hour, and learn more. They also dropped the traditional magazine format for a narrative format. "... The choice for Blue's Clue became to tell one story, beginning to end, camera moving left-to-right like reading a storybook, transitions from scene to scene as obvious as the turning of a page."^[2] Every episode of Blue's Clues was structured in this way. Its pace was deliberate and its material was presented very clearly.^[6] One way this was done was in the use of pauses--"long enough to give the youngest time to think, short enough for the oldest not to get bored."^[2]

Another way the creators of the show encouraged participation was their use of repetition. At first, Nickelodeon aired the same episode daily for five days before showing the next one. In field tests, the attention and comprehension of young viewers increased with each repeated viewing.^[7] Repetition is also built into the structure of each episode. For example, "in an episode called 'Blue's Predictions,' the show's human host, Joe, says some variation of the word 'predict' around 15 times."^[5]

[edit] Format

The format of each episode of Blue's Clues is the same.

Steve, the host, presents the audience with a puzzle involving Blue, the animated dog ... To help the audience unlock the puzzle, Blue leaves behind a series of clues, which are objects tattooed with one of her paw prints. In between the discovery of the clues, Steve plays a series of games--mini-puzzles--with the audience that are thematically related to the overall puzzle ... As the show unfolds, Steve and Blue move from one animated set to another, jumping through magical doorways, leading viewers on a journey of discovery, until, at the end of the story, Steve returns to the living room. There, at the climax of the show, he sits down in a comfortable chair to think--a chair known, of course, in the literal world of Blue's Clues, as the Thinking Chair. He puzzles over Blue's three clues and attempts to come up with the answer.^[8]

[edit] Development

In the summer of 1994, Kessler, Santomero, and Johnson met at the Nickelodeon studios to develop Blue's Clues. At first, the character Blue was a cat and the name of the show was "Blue's Prints." Blue became a dog only because Nickelodeon was already producing a show about a cat.^[1] Kessler handled the production aspect of the show, Santomero research, and Johnson the animation and design.^[9]

The creators understood that the show's "look and visual design would be integral to the attachment children would have to the show."^[10] Johnson utilized simple cut-out shapes of familiar objects with a wide variety of colors and textures to resemble a storybook. She hired artist Dave Palmer to develop what was at that time a new technology--creating the animation from simple materials like fabric, paper or pipe-cleaners and then scanning them into a computer so that they could be animated without repeatedly re-drawing them like in traditional animation. The result was something that looked different from anything else on television at the time. They were also able to animate their shows in less time compared to traditional methods, eight weeks for two episodes as opposed to sixteen weeks for one.^[11]^[5]

Another innovative aspect of the production process of Blue's Clues was the producers' use of research. In addition to using the concepts of early childhood educational research, they field tested every episode three times before putting it on air. (In comparison, Sesame Street tested a third of its episodes once, after they were completed).^[12]In their tests at preschools before the premiere, the show was "immediately successful."^[1]

Another key to the success of Blue's Clues was casting. According to Traci Paige Johnson, she was cast as Blue's voice because out of the show's crew, she sounded the most like a dog. Nick Balaban, who, along with Michael Rubin, wrote the music for the show, was cast as the voice of Mr. Salt. (Balabin reported that Mr. Salt was not originally French; he spoke with a Brooklyn accent.)^[1]

The most important casting was that of the host, essentially the only human in the show. After over 100 auditions and months of research, the producers hired actor/performer Steven Burns,^[1] who became a producer of the show by 1999.^[13] Burns remained on Blue's Clues for seven years and was in over one hundred episodes, until he left to pursue a musical career in 2002. He was replaced by Donovan Patton, who was subjected to the same kind of scrutiny to earn the job.^[1]

[edit] Reception and influence

Blue's Clues premiered on September 8, 1996.^[1] It was a "smash hit," largely in due to the intensive and extensive research its producers employed.^[2] Within eighteen months of its premiere, "virtually 100% of preschoolers' parents knew about Blue's Clues," an awareness comprable to "top-tier" shows like the 30-year old Sesame Street.^[14] It became the highest-rated show for preschoolers on commercial television;^[6]by 2002; 13.7 million viewed tuned in each week. In 2000, the show had generated over $1 billion in licensing products. It has received numerous awards for excellence in children's programming, educational software, and licensing, and has received nine Emmy nominations. More than ten million Blue's Clues books were in print by 2001, and over three million copies of six CD-ROM titles based on the show have sold since 1998.^[15]

Blue's Clues was one of the first children's television show that allowed countries outside the U.S. to produce their own versions of the show. It was a run-away hit in the U.K., and has become part of pop culture in Korea. The "dubbed" American version is shown in over sixty countries.^[16] It was also one of the first preschool shows to incorporate American Sign Language into its content. (Approximately seven signs are used consistently in each episode.)^[17]

The show's extensive use of research in its development and production process has inspired several research projects that have provided evidence for its efficacy as a learning tool. In 2000, four studies, funded by Nickelodeon and the University of Alabama, researched the impact of Blue's Clues on its young viewers. When repeated viewings of the same episode were tested, children showed increased material comprehension, especially in their use of problem-solving strategies. Regular viewers tended to interact with other TV programs more than other children. A longitudinal study was also conducted; it indicated that watching Blue's Clues increased children's information-acquisition skills (sequencing, patterning, relational concepts, and transformations). Finally, the show improved children's flexible thinking--solving riddles, creative thinking, and non-verbal and verbal skills.^[18]

[edit] References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Jim Forbes (narrator). Behind the clues: 10 years of Blue [Short documentary]. Nickelodeon.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Weisman, Jon. "Interactive innovator draws raves", Variety.com, 2006-08-02. Retrieved on 2007-11-21.
^ Tracy, Diane (2002). Blue's Clues for success: The 8 secrets behind a phenomenal business. New York, New York: Kaplan Publishing, 61. ISBN 079315376X.
^ Gladwell, Malcolm (2000). The tipping point: How little things can make a big difference. Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, 111. ISBN 0-316-34662-4.
^ ^a ^b ^c Jaffe, Eric (December 2005). "Watch and learn". APS Observer 18 (12). Retrieved on 2007-12-04.
^ ^a ^b Collins, James. "Tube for tots", Time Magazine, 2006-08-02. Retrieved on 2007-12-04.
^ Gladwell, p. 125-126
^ Gladwell, p. 122
^ Mifflin, Lawrie. "The joy of repetition, repetition, repetition", The New York Times, 1997-08-07. Retrieved on 2007-12-09.
^ Tracy, p. 95
^ Tracy, p. 94
^ Gladwell, p. 127
^ Iovine. "At home with--Steven Burns; A few clues in Brooklyn", The New York Times, 1999-11-18. Retrieved on 2007-12-11.
^ Tracy, p. 3
^ Tracy, p. 3-4
^ Tracy, p. 59-60
^ Lee, Felicia R.. "A children's adventure in a Deaf world", The New York Times, 2000-04-22. Retrieved on 2007-12-14.
^ Anderson, Daniel R. (2000). "Researching Blue's Clues: Viewing behavior and impact". Media Psychology 2 (2): 179-194. Retrieved on 2007-12-12.