Blue's Clues

Blue's Clues
Format	Children's television series
Created by	Traci Paige Johnson Todd Kessler Angela Santomero
Presented by	Steve Burns (1996–2002) Donovan Patton (2002–2006)
Composer(s)	Nick Balaban Michael Rubin Bernard Devlin (associate composer)
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	145 (List of episodes)
Production
Running time	30 minutes
Production company(s)	Nick Jr. Productions Nick Digital
Broadcast
Original channel	Nickelodeon Nick Jr.
Original run	September 8, 1996 (1996-09-08) – August 6, 2006 (2006-08-06)
Chronology
Followed by	Blue's Room
External links
Website

Blue's Clues is an American children's television show that premiered on September 8, 1996 on the cable television network Nickelodeon, and ran for ten years, 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 Steven Burns, who left in 2002 to pursue a music career, and later by Donovan Patton. Burns was a crucial reason for the show's success, and rumors that surrounded his departure were an indication of the show's emergence as a cultural phenomenon. Blue's Clues became the highest-rated show for preschoolers on American commercial television and was crucial 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 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. They 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 efficacy as a learning tool.

History

Toy versions of the characters Blue and Periwinkle

PBS was one of few sources for children's educational television programming in the U.S. before 1990. According to Blue's Clues for Success (2002) author Diane Tracy, "The state of children's television was pretty dismal". Congress passed the Children's Television Act that year, 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. Most of the children's programming in the U.S. was violent and created for the purpose of selling toys. The U.S. 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 6- to 12-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". The character Blue was originally conceived as a cat, and the name of the show was to be "Blue's Prints," but Blue was changed to 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 intensive and extensive research its producers employed, and became crucial to Nickelodeon's growth. Within eighteen 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 January 2006, a spin-off, Blue's Room, was launched. It starred Blue's Clues second host, Donovan Patton, and featured puppets instead of animation. Blue's Clues celebrated its 10-year anniversary in 2006 with a DVD compilation of "milestone" episodes that included Burns' 2002 departure and a 12-minute retrospective produced by VH1's "Behind the Music" staff.

Steve Burns in 2008

Casting

Casting was an important part of the success of Blue's Clues. Traci Paige Johnson was cast as Blue's voice because, 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. Balaban initially used a Brooklyn accent for Mr. Salt before settling on a French accent. Rubin performed the voice of Mailbox.

The most important casting was that of the host, the only human character in the show, who had to translate and embody the vision of the show on-screen. His role was to empower, challenge, and increase the viewers' self-esteem, and to form a strong connection with the audience through his gestures, pacing, and facial expressions. 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, "What made Burns a great children's 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, then 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 won the part 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 provided Patton with training regarding how 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.

Format

In The Tipping Point, author Malcolm Gladwell called the show "sticky", and described its format:

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 marked 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.

Nickelodeon researcher Daniel Anderson called the structure of Blue's Clues a game that presented its viewers with increasingly challenging and developmentally appropriate problems to solve. Early episodes focused on basic subjects such as colors and numbers, but later the programs focused on math, physics, anatomy, and astronomy. The show's producers believed that comprehension and attention were strongly connected, so they wrote the episodes to encourage and increase their viewers' attention. They used content and production characteristics such as pacing which gave children time to respond, as well as "camera techniques, children's voices, musical cues, sound effects, clear transitions, repeatable dialogue, and visuals". Participation and the mastery of thinking skills were encouraged by the use of repetition, both within the structure of individual episodes and across multiple episodes. Nickelodeon originally aired the same episode daily for five days before showing the next.

Educational goals

The creators' and producers' goals were to "empower, challenge, and build the self-esteem of preschoolers" while entertaining them. Kessler, Santomero and Johnson were influenced by the first children's television program to utilize a detailed and comprehensive educational curriculum developed from research, Sesame Street. "We wanted to learn from Sesame Street and take it one step further," Santomero said. In addition to a curriculum that emphasized reasoning skills relevant to preschoolers' everyday lives, the producers wanted to include audience participation, called by Variety its "call and response style", that encouraged mastery of the information presented, positive reinforcement, and prosocial messages. In their first brainstorming sessions in 1994, Santomero, Kessler, and Johnson decided to promote mastery rather than rote learning or memorizing, make sure that their viewers knew the answers to the puzzles with which they were presented, and include elements of surprise and play.

When I believed we had the best show on television that could educate preschoolers and positively impact their lives, I was relentless. I wanted so much to give kids a television show that celebrates how smart they are, because I truly believe they are brilliant. I also wanted to create a show that would help pre-schoolers feel good about themselves".

Blue's Clues co-creator and producer Angela Santomero

The production of Blue's Clues was based on research that showed that television, a "cultural artifact" and accessible for most American children, could be a "powerful educational agent". Television was a potentially effective method of scientific education for young children because it told stories through pictures and because it modeled behavior and learning. The creators and producers used film techniques to present information from multiple perspectives in many "real world" contexts, or situations within the daily experiences of young children. They wanted to provide their viewers with more "authentic learning opportunities" by placing problem-solving tasks within the stories they told, by slowly increasing the difficulty of these tasks, and by inviting their involvement. These learning opportunities included the use of mnemonics in the form of mantras and songs, and what Tracy called "metacognitive wrap-up" at the end of each episode, in which the lessons were summarized and rehearsed. The producers wanted to foster their audience's sense of empowerment by eliciting their assistance for the show's host and by encouraging their identification with the character Blue, who served as a stand-in for the typical preschooler.

Sesame Street was designed around the prevailing view that preschoolers had short attention spans, so its curriculum was a magazine-like format in which each episode was made up of a variety of segments. Based on research conducted over the 30 years since the launch of Sesame Street by theorists such as Daniel Anderson of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who served as a consultant for Blue's Clues, the producers wanted to develop a show that took advantage of children's intellectual and behavioral activity when watching television. Previous children's television programs presented their content with little input from their viewers, but Blue's Clues revolutionized the genre by inviting its viewers' involvement. Its creators believed that if children were more involved in what they were viewing, they would attend to its content longer than previously expected — for up to a half hour — and learn more. They also dropped the magazine format for a more traditional narrative format. As Variety Magazine stated, "... The choice for Blue's Clues 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." Every episode of Blue's Clues was structured in this way. Its pace was deliberate and its material was presented clearly. Like what had already been done in Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, which also inspired the producers, one way this was done was in the use of pauses that were "long enough to give the youngest time to think, short enough for the oldest not to get bored." The success of Blue's Clues caused Sesame Street to change its format and add more interactive segments in 2002. Blue's Clues also differed from Sesame Street by not using cultural references or humor aimed at adults, as this could confuse preschoolers, but instead made the show literal, which the producers felt would better hold the children's attention. The structure of each episode was repetitive, designed to provide preschoolers with comfort and predictability.

Production

Blue's Clues was set in the home — the environment that was most familiar and secure for preschoolers — and looked like no other children's television show. Each episode, from idea development to final production, took approximately one year to complete. Writers created a goal sheet, which identified their objectives based on the show's curriculum and audience needs. Script drafts, once developed and approved by the show's creators and research team, were tested at public and private schools, day care centers, preschools, and Head Start programs by three researchers, who would narrate the story in the form of a storybook and take notes about the children's responses. The writers and creators revised the scripts based on this feedback. A rough video, in which the host would perform from the revised script in front of a blue screen with no animation, would be filmed and retested. The script would be revised again based on the audiences' responses, tested a third time with animation and music added, and incorporated into future productions.

Most of the show's production was done in-house rather than by outside companies as with many other children's TV shows. The show's creators understood that the show's look and visual design would be integral to the attachment children would have to the show. Johnson expanded on the "cut-out" style she had created during her college years. Blue's Clues was the first animation series for preschoolers that utilized simple cut-out construction paper shapes of familiar objects with a wide variety of colors and textures that resembled a storybook. Johnson also used primary colors and organized each room of the home setting into groups. The green-striped shirt worn by the show's original host, Steve, was inspired by Fruit Stripe gum. The goals were to make the show look natural and simplistic, as Tracy put it, "freshly cut and glued together with a vivid array of textures, colors, and shadows" similar to picture book illustrations. The music, produced by composer Michael Rubin and pianist Nick Balaban, was unlike that in most other children's shows. The music was simple, had a natural sound, and exposed children to a wide variety of genres and instruments. According to Tracy, the music empowered children and gave the show "a sense of playfulness, a sense of joy, and a sense of the fantastic". Rubin and Balaban encouraged the musicians who performed for the show to improvise.

The host performed each episode in front of a "blue screen", with animation added later. The show's digital design department combined high-tech and low-tech methods by creating and photographing three-dimensional objects, then cutting them out and placing them into the background. This made the objects look more real, and added perspective and depth. Their animation technique was at that time a new technology. Johnson hired artist Dave Palmer and production company Big Pink to create the animation from simple materials like fabric, paper or pipe-cleaners and scan them into a Macintosh computer, so that they could be animated using inexpensive computer software such as Media 100, Ultimatte, Photoshop and After Effects instead of repeatedly redrawn as in traditional animation. The result was something that looked different from anything else on television at the time, and the producers were able to animate two episodes in eight weeks, as compared to the sixteen weeks necessary to create a single episode by traditional methods. Their process looked like traditional cut-out animation, but was faster, more flexible and less expensive, and allowed them to make changes based on feedback from test audiences. Unlike traditional animation environments, which tended to be highly structured, the animators were given information about the characters and goals of the scenes they would animate, and then given the freedom to work out the timing and look of each scene themselves, as long as their creations were true to the characters and to the story. By 1999, the show's animation department consisted of Palmer, 20 animators, 11 digital designers, and 5 art directors and model makers. By 2002, Nickelodeon had built a "state-of-the-art" $6 million digital animation studio that housed 140 people, including 70 animators.

Research

Another innovative aspect of the production process of Blue's Clues was the producers' use of formative research, which the producers call their "secret sauce" because of its importance in the writing and producing of each episode. According to Tracy, research was part of the creative and decision-making process in the production of the show, and was integrated into all aspects of the creative process. The show's content was based on research in child development, studies on using television as a teaching tool, and in school preparation. By 2001, the show's research team consisted of head researcher Alice Wilder (who joined the team shortly after its debut and who, according to Tracy, reinvented the role of research in children's television and helped train the writers and animators to trust and use research), Alison Sherman, Karen Leavitt, and Koshi Dhingra. The research team and creators worked collaboratively.

Unlike Sesame Street, which tested a third of its episodes, the Blue's Clues research team field tested every episode three times with children aged from two to six in preschool environments such as Head Start programs, public schools, and private daycare centers. There were three phases of their testing: content evaluation, video evaluations, and content analysis. In their tests of the pilot, conducted at daycare centers, preschools, and Headstart programs throughout the New York City area with over 100 children aged from three to seven, the show was "immediately successful." They found that as the pilot progressed, not only was children's attention captured and sustained, they became excited and actively participated with what they saw, to the point that they stood up to get closer to the television and spoke back to the host. The producers and researchers also consulted outside advisers, who were chosen based on their expertise and the needs of each script. As Anderson stated, the formative research team served "as a liaison between the feedback provided by the preschoolers and outside advisers and the production team, including writers, talent, producers, directors, element artists, and animators".

Reception

Blue's Clues has been described as the first commercial television show for preschoolers that was both educational and profitable. The show began "a revolution in kids' TV" and started the trend of targeting preschool programs and merchandise to younger viewers. Its creators met regularly with the businesses that created products for the show, to ensure their goals of creating high-quality products that were educational and met "the same high ... standards as the show". Products, like the show, were heavily tested prior to marketing.

Ray Charles, shown here in 1990, appeared in the popular Blue's Clues DVD Blue's Big Musical Movie

Blue's Clues had sold almost 40 million units of its 45 VHS and DVD titles by 1998, and generated over $1 billion in product licensing in 2000. 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 had been sold. Seven Blue's Clues titles sold at least 1 million copies each. The show's first direct to video production, Blue's Big Musical Movie (2000), which featured Ray Charles and The Persuasions, received mostly positive reviews, and has sold over 3 million copies since 2006. The launch of Blue's Clues products at FAO Schwarz's flagship store in New York City was the most successful product launch in the store's history, and was attended by over 7,000 people. By 2002, Blue's Clues had received several awards for children's programming, educational software, and licensing and been nominated for nine Emmy Awards.

A live production of Blue's Clues toured the U.S. starting in 1999, to positive reviews. Johnson compared the show's audience participation with that of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. As of 2002, over 2 million people had attended over 1,000 performances. The creators of the TV show were involved in all aspects of the live show. Their goals were to translate the bond between the TV show's audience and its cast to the stage, and to provide young audiences with their first theatrical experience. The creators chose Jonathan Hochwald as the live show's producer, Gip Hoppe as its director, and Dave Gallo as its set designer. Neither Hoppe nor Gallo had any previous experience in children's theater. Nick Balaban and Michael Rubin, who wrote the music for the TV show, composed the live show's soundtrack. The producers were concerned with children's response to the host, who was played by Tom Mizer (a different actor than the host of the TV show), but the young audience enthusiastically accepted him. Actors were encouraged to improvise and respond to the audience, which resulted in changes throughout the show's run. The show's script included humor that both children and their parents could enjoy.

Other countries have produced regional versions of the show that feature native hosts. It has been successful in the UK, become part of pop culture in Korea, been syndicated in 120 countries, and been translated into 15 languages. In 2000, it became one of the first preschool shows to incorporate American Sign Language into its content, with five-to-ten signs used consistently in each episode. Blue's Clues won an award from the Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness (GLAD) for promoting deaf awareness in the media.

Influence

The show's extensive use of research in its development and production process inspired several studies that provided evidence for its efficacy as a learning tool. Field tests showed that the attention and comprehension of young viewers increased with each repeat viewing. Anderson and a team of researchers, some of which were his colleagues at Nickelodeon, studied in 1999 "the impact of episode repetition on visual attention, audience participation, and comprehension". The researchers wanted to test whether repeated viewings of the show resulted in mastery over the material presented, or if viewers would habituate or become bored. They discovered that audience participation was lower for the first few viewings, because children paid more attention to unfamiliar material, and that understanding and solving the problems presented were more cognitively demanding. After five viewings, more of the viewers' cognitive resources were available for interaction and participation, so they answered more questions. As the researchers stated, "... Episode repetition appears to foster empowerment, as revealed in children's enthusiastic efforts to 'help' solve problems". They also found that repetition, which they called "an inexpensive tool to maximize comprehension", improved comprehension, held children's attention, and increased audience participation. Children were not only tolerant of repetition, they were "positively enthusiastic" about it.

Another team of researchers, which also included Anderson and his Nickelodeon colleagues, studied in 2000 whether experienced Blue's Clues viewers interacted more with the show than less-frequent viewers, and whether regular viewers of the show interacted more with other shows than did children who were not. They found that when the content of a program children watched was new and challenging, they paid more attention, and when it was familiar, either from previous viewings or in a format they recognized, they interacted more. In short, they found that "interaction in Blue's Clues to some extent reflects mastery".

Actress Marlee Matlin, shown here in 2009, appeared in several Blue's Clues episodes introducing American Sign Language to its young viewers

A similar study, also conducted in 2000 by many of the same researchers, found that experienced Blue's Clues viewers interacted more with other educational programs than did inexperienced viewers, which proved that watching Blue's Clues changed the way children watch television. Jennings Bryant conducted a longitudinal study of the effects of Blue's Clues at the University of Alabama in 2001, to ascertain whether or not the show's curriculum goals were achieved. He found that they were, and that the show's "episode repetition strategy" improved children's comprehension while holding their attention and increasing their participation, which suggested that children's learning and social interactions benefited from their watching of Blue's Clues. As Anderson stated, "Given the program's large audience, it appears that the program is not only doing well, but it is also doing good".

Erin Ryan and her colleagues performed a 2009 study on the effect of the use of American Sign Language (ASL) in Blue's Clues episodes. They analyzed 16 episodes over two weeks for the content and frequency of the signs used. This "revealed a high incidence of ASL usage by various characters", but little "consistent use of ASL". They found a "lack of consistency between the utilization of spoken words and the signs that represent them", and a lack of explanation for the purpose of signed communication and its connection with ASL and the Deaf community. The researchers speculated that hearing children with no previous ASL exposure would be familiarized with ASL and the deaf by these episodes, which would reduce the stigma attached to deafness and hard of hearing individuals. Based on other research about the positive effects of teaching ASL to hearing children, the researchers also speculated that it could lead to an increase of vocabulary skills and IQ, as well as improve interpersonal communication. They surmised that deaf children would feel more included and less isolated, and that they would have the opportunity to view positive models of ASL and deaf people.

David Gesler, a professor at Murray State University, used Blue's Clues to introduce research methods to undergraduate students and to engage them in the research process. He developed a "successful" exercise for students that helped them to become more comfortable with research and countered their negative conceptions of research.

Anderson and his colleagues reported the show's positive results, but found no evidence that watching Blue's Clues increased the expressive vocabularies of its viewers. Researcher Shalom M. Fisch stated that although the show attempted to be "participatory", it could not truly be so, because unlike interactive computer games, the viewers' responses could not change or influence what occurred on-screen.

Georgene L. Troseth and her colleagues at Vanderbilt University studied how toddlers use information gained from pre-recorded video and from interactions with a person through closed-circuit video, and found that two-year olds do not learn as much from pre-recorded videos because the videos lack social cues and personal references. Two-year olds who viewed a pretaped video with instructions about how to find a toy in an adjoining room by a non-interactive researcher did not use the information, even though they smiled and responded to questions. Troseth speculated that their research had implications for interactive educational shows like Blue's Clues, which although was "on the right track" due to the way in which the host invites interaction with the shows viewers, did not provide children with the social cues to solve real-world problems. Troseth states that repetition, repeated exposure, and familiarity with the show's host may increase children's ability to learn facts and to use strategies they learn from Blue's Clues to solve new problems. Her research suggested that Blue's Clues engages young children and elicits their active participation because they mimic social interaction.

References

Explanatory notes

Citations

Bibliography

• Anderson, Daniel R.; Jennings Bryant; Alice Wilder; Angela Santomero; Marsha Williams; Alisha M. Crawley. (2000). "Researching Blue's Clues: Viewing Behavior and Impact". Media Psychology 2 (2): 179–194. doi:10.1207/S1532785XMEP0202_4
• Gladwell, Malcolm (2000). The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. New York: Little, Brown, and Company. ISBN 0-316-31696-2
• Ryan, Erin; Cynthia Nichols; Melissa Weinstein; Rebecca Burton. (2009). "Helping Hands? The Use of American Sign Language in Nickelodeon's Blue's Clues." Conference Papers—International Communication Association: 1–37.
• Tracy, Diane. (2002). Blue's Clues for Success: The 8 Secrets Behind a Phenomenal Business. New York: Kaplan Publishing. ISBN 0-7931-5376-X.

• Troseth, Georgene L.; Megan M. Saylor. Allison H. Archer. (May/June 2006). "Young Children's Use of Video as a Source of Socially Relevant Information". Child Development 77 (3): 786–799. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00903.x

External links

• Official website
• Blue's Clues at the Internet Movie Database
• Blue's Clues at TV.com
• Blue's Clues at epguides.com