Blue's Clues

Blue's Clues is an American children's television series that premiered on September 8, 1996, on the cable television network Nickelodeon, and ran for nearly a decade until August 6, 2006. Producers Angela Santomero, Todd Kessler, and Traci Paige Johnson combined concepts from child development and early-childhood education with innovative animation and production techniques that helped their viewers learn. It was hosted originally by Steve Burns, who left in 2002 to pursue a music career, and was replaced by Donovan Patton. The show follows an animated blue-spotted dog named Blue as she plays a game with the host and the viewers. Blue's Clues became the highest-rated show for preschoolers on American commercial television and was critical to Nickelodeon's growth. It has been called "one of the most successful, critically acclaimed, and ground-breaking preschool television series of all time". A spin-off called Blue's Room premiered in 2004.

The show's producers and creators presented material in a narrative format instead of the more traditional magazine format, used repetition to reinforce its curriculum, and structured every episode the same way. They used research about child development and young children's viewing habits that had been conducted in the thirty years since the debut of Sesame Street in the U.S., and revolutionized the genre by inviting their viewers' involvement. Research was part of the creative and decision-making process in the production of the show, and was integrated into all aspects and stages of the creative process. Blue's Clues was the first cutout animation series for preschoolers, and resembled a storybook in its use of primary colors and its simple construction paper shapes of familiar objects with varied colors and textures. Its home-based setting was familiar to American children, but had a look unlike other children's TV shows. A live production of Blue's Clues, which used many of the production innovations developed by the show's creators, toured the U.S. starting in 1999. As of 2002, over 2 million people had attended over 1,000 performances.

By 2002, Blue's Clues had received several awards for excellence in children's programming, educational software, and licensing, and had been nominated for nine Emmy Awards. Versions of the show have been produced in other countries, and it has been syndicated in 120 countries and translated into 15 languages. It was one of the first preschool shows to incorporate American Sign Language into its content. The show's extensive use of research in its development and production process inspired several research studies that have provided evidence for its effectiveness as a learning tool.

History
Blue's Clues was developed during a transitional period for children's television. In 1990, Congress had passed the Children's Television Act, which required networks and TV stations to devote a portion of their programming to children's shows, but the legislation did not specify how many hours of programming broadcasters were required to air. It set no guidelines or criteria for educational programs and had no provisions for enforcement. According to author Diane Tracy in her 2002 book Blue's Clues for Success, "The state of children's television was pretty dismal". Since the late 1960s, PBS was one of the few sources for children's educational television programming in the U.S., and most other U.S. educational TV shows were violent and were created for the purpose of selling toys. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled in 1997 that the commercial networks had to air educational children's programs for a minimum of three hours per week. The cable network Nickelodeon, which had been airing programs for six to twelve year olds, was not legally bound by this legislation, but complied with it anyway, many years before the laws and regulations were passed.

Nickelodeon assigned a team of producers to create a new U.S. television program for young children in mid-1994, using research on early childhood education and the viewing habits of preschoolers. These producers, who were made up of the "green creative team" of Angela Santomero, Todd Kessler, and Traci Paige Johnson, met at Nickelodeon Studios for a month to develop Blue's Clues. Kessler, Santomero, and Johnson, according to Tracy, did not have the traditional backgrounds of most producers of children's programs, but "did possess an amazing combination of talents, backgrounds and personal attributes".Researcher Daniel R. Anderson of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who had also worked on Sesame Street, was an adviser for the new show. The character Blue was originally conceived as a cat, and the name of the show was to be "Blue's Prints", but the show's name was changed and Blue became a dog because Nickelodeon was already producing a show about a cat. Kessler handled the show's production, Santomero the research, and Johnson the animation and design. They were given a modest $150,000 to produce a pilot.

Blue's Clues premiered in the U.S. on September 8, 1996. It was a smash hit, largely due to the producers' extensive research, and became crucial to Nickelodeon's growth. Within 18 months of its premiere, Blue's Clues was as well known as more established children's shows such as the 30-year-old Sesame Street. It became the highest-rated show for preschoolers on commercial television. By 2002, 13.7 million viewers tuned in each week.

In 2004, a spin-off, Blue's Room, was launched. It featured puppets instead of animation as well as the original show's second host, Joe, in several episodes. Blue's Clues celebrated its 10-year anniversary in 2006 with a DVD that consisted of a 12-minute retrospective produced by VH1's "Behind the Music" staff, and a collection of "milestone" episodes, including first host Steve Burns' 2002 departure.

Casting
The most important casting decision was that of the host, the only human character in the show. The host's role was to empower and challenge the show's young viewers, to help increase their self-esteem, and to strongly connect with them through the television screen. The producers originally wanted a female host but after months of research and over 1,000 auditions, they hired actor/performer Steve Burns based on the strength of his audition. Burns received the strongest and most enthusiastic response in tests with preschoolers. Johnson said that what made Burns a great children's TV host was that "he didn't want to be a children's host ... He loved kids, but he didn't want to make a career out of it". Burns remained on Blue's Clues for seven years and was in over 100 episodes before he left to pursue a musical career in 2002. Burns himself stated, "I knew I wasn't gonna be doing children's television all my life, mostly because I refused to lose my hair on a kid's TV show, and it was happenin'—fast."

Accompanied by a "concentrated multiplatform promotional campaign" that included articles in Nickelodeon's magazine and on its webpage, an arc of three episodes introduced Burns' replacement Donovan Patton, who played Steve's brother Joe. Patton was subjected to the same kind of scrutiny to earn the job, and was selected out of 1,500 auditions. Patton had never seen Blue's Clues before he auditioned for the part, but like Burns, was the favorite with preschool test audiences. Burns helped train Patton to perform the role. "We saw Steve Burns' retirement from the show as a chance to put Blue's Clues on a new course", Johnson said. Also according to Johnson, Joe's character was more like a preschooler and more innocent than Steve.

Johnson was cast as Blue's voice because, of the show's crew, she was able to sound the most like a dog. Nick Balaban, who wrote the music for the show along with Michael Rubin, was cast as the voice of Mr. Salt. Balaban initially used a Brooklyn accent for Mr. Salt before settling on a French accent. Rubin performed the voice of Mailbox.

Episodes
Main article: List of Blue's Clues episodes