Blue's Cluespawprint

We can do anything we wanna do!

## Status

New reboot, but it sucks

***Blue's Clues*** is an American live-action/animated educational children's television series that premiered on Nick Jr. on September 8, 1996. Producers/creators 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. The show was originally hosted by Steve Burns, who left in 2002 and was replaced by Donovan Patton as Joe for the rest of the series. The show follows an animated blue-spotted dog named Blue as she leaves a trail of clues/paw prints for the host and the viewers to figure out her plans for the day. *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 resembles 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 is familiar to American children but has 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. It has been syndicated in 120 countries and translated into 15 languages. Regional versions of the show featuring local hosts have been produced in other countries. 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.

*Blue's Clues* was the longest-running Nick Jr. series until it was surpassed by *Dora the Explorer* in 2012. In March 2018, Nickelodeon announced a reboot of the series titled *Blue's Clues & You!*, which premiered on November 11, 2019.

## History

By 1990, parents, teachers, and media experts had been criticizing "the lack of quality fare for children on commercial television" for many years. Up to that point, PBS was the only source for quality children's television; other broadcasters voluntarily set educational standards for their programming and "were expected to regulate themselves", but it led to little change in the quality of children's programs. By the time *Blue's Clues* premiered in 1996, there was a large number of TV shows for children, but most of them were violent and designed to sell action toys and other products. According to author Diane Tracy in her 2002 book *Blue's Clues for Success*, "The state of children's television was pretty dismal".

There was little incentive for producing high-quality children's television until 1990, when Congress passed the Children's Television Act (CTA), which "required that networks be held accountable for the quality of children's programming or risk losing their license". The CTA set no hourly quotas and left it to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to determine compliance to the law, so little positive improvements were made. In 1996, the FCC passed additional regulations, including requiring broadcasters to, in a provision called "the Three-Hour rule", air at least three hours of children's programming per week, between the hours of 07:00 to 22:00, and that they be tagged with an E/I (Educational and Informational) logo so that children and their families could easily find the programs. The cable network Nickelodeon, which was recognized, along with PBS, as a leader in the creation and production of high-quality children's programming, was not required to comply with federal regulations to provide informative or educational content, but did so anyway, before the CTA became law.

According to Heather L. Kirkorian and her fellow researchers Ellen Wartella and Daniel Anderson in 2008, since television appeared in homes beginning in the mid-20th century, critics have often expressed concern about its impact on viewers, especially children, who as Kirkorian argued, are "active media users" by the age of three. Researchers believed that there were links between television viewing and children's cognitive and learning skills and that what children watched may be more important than how much they watched it. She reported that up until the 1980s, researchers had only an implicit theory about how viewers watched television, and that young children were cognitively passive viewers and controlled by "salient attention-eliciting features" like sound effects and fast movement. As a result, most researchers believed that television interfered with cognition and reflection and as a result, children could not learn from and process television. In the early 1980s, however, new theories about how young children watch television suggested that attention in children as young as two-years old were largely guided by program content.

In the mid-1990s, Nickelodeon, looking to create programming for preschoolers, hired a team of three producers, Angela Santomero, Todd Kessler, and Traci Paige Johnson, to create a new television program for young children. According to *The New York Times*, Kessler was the first creator to be brought on board to the project. Kessler had worked on *Sesame Street*, but he disliked its format and thought that it was too static and not visual enough, and was a freelance producer at Nickelodeon at the time. Santomero worked at Nickelodeon as a researcher and Johnson was a freelance artist and animator. Santomero later said that they "were young, and Nickelodeon took a chance on us". Daniel R. Anderson of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who author Malcolm Gladwell called one of the "pioneering television researchers", was an adviser for the new show. Nickelodeon had hired Anderson as an adviser for its Nick Jr. block of preschool programs starting in 1993, although Santomero had already been getting his input about research informally. When Nickelodeon enlisted her to co-create *Blue's Clues*, he came on in a more formal capacity.

Santomero, Kessler, and Johnson met in a conference room at Viacom, which owned Nickelodeon, in New York for a month to create *Blue's Clues*. 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 and because, as Anderson reported, children who watched the pilot, which was used for testing, "almost universally called the show *Blue's Clues*". Kessler handled the show's "computer-based production", Santomero the research, and Johnson the design. Alice Wilder served as director of research for the show. They were given $150,000 to produce a pilot, about a quarter of the budget for other Nickelodeon shows at the time, which was used in 1995 to test the show's interactive elements with its potential audience. The pilot was considered lost, but in 2021, Santomero announced that she owned a copy of it, although it was unclear if it would ever be released due to legal issues.

*Blue's Clues* premiered in the U.S. on September 8, 1996. The premiere was the highest-rated premiere of any Nickelodeon program, and the show became crucial to the network's growth. By the end of 1997, it was the highest-rated show for preschoolers on commercial television, and was the third-highest rated show when compared to children's shows on public television. Within 18 months of its premiere, *Blue's Clues* was as well-known among the parents of preschoolers as more established children's shows such as *Sesame Street*. In 2002, Tracy reported that it was one of the highest-rated shows for preschoolers, was preschool children and their parents' favorite cable preschool program, was viewed by approximately 13.7 million viewers each week, and aired in about 60 countries.

In 2000, after 75 episodes, with "no fanfare" and no announcement from Nickelodeon, co-creator and co-producer Todd Kessler left *Blue's Clues* and the network to pursue other projects. He told *The New York Times* that he had "no hard feelings" regarding his departure. Kessler continued to be listed as an executive producer for the run of the show and for any future spin-offs. Also in 2000, CBS, which was also owned by Viacom, began airing the show as part of the centerpiece of its Saturday and Sunday morning children's programming. In 2004, *Blue's Clues* stopped production, which Santomero called "devastating", although it continued to air on Nickelodeon, and a spin-off, *Blue's Room*, was launched in 2006. It featured puppets, as well as the original show's second host. *Blue's Clues* celebrated its 10-year anniversary in 2006 with a prime time special and the release of a DVD entitled "Blues Biggest Stories", which consisted of eight half-hour episodes spanning the show's history.

In November 2019, a reboot of *Blue's Clues* premiered. The show, called *Blue's Clues & You!*, was hosted by Joshua Dela Cruz and featured many of the same characters in the original show. Steve Burns, the original show's first host, served as a writer and director on the new show; he also made guest appearances, along with the original show's second host Donovan Patton, and participated in the casting of Dela Cruz.

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. 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 the young audience. Johnson said 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 was in over 100 episodes of *Blue's Clues* when he left the show in April 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."

After the producers conducted 1,500 auditions, Burns was replaced by actor Donovan Patton, who played Steve's brother Joe, introduced to the audience in articles in Nickelodeon's magazine and on its webpage and an arc of three episodes. Burns' departure generated "outlandish rumors" and was featured in a *Time Magazine* story. Patton had never seen *Blue's Clues* before he auditioned for the part, and like Burns, who worked with him to help him prepare for the role, was also popular with preschool test audiences. The producers later reported that finding someone who could match Burns' "deceptively simple performance" was difficult. Patton became a "household name", although as Johnson stated, his character was named Joe because "Donovan was a little too hard on a preschooler’s tongue". According to *The New York Times*, Donovan played the role more relaxed "and taller" than Burns.

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 also provided the voice of Mailbox.

## Characters

* Blue (Traci Paige Johnson) – A blue-spotted dog who leaves pawprints on clues to give her owners a message.
* Steve (Steve Burns) – Joe's older brother and first host.
* Joe (Donovan Patton) – Steve's younger brother and second host.
* Mailbox (Michael Rubin) – A talking mailbox who delivers a letter to Steve or Joe in each episode.
* Sidetable Drawer (Aleisha Allen) – The keeper of the Handy Dandy Notebook.
* Mr. Salt (Nick Balaban) – Husband of Mrs. Pepper and father of Paprika and Cinnamon.
* Mrs. Pepper (Spencer Kayden) – Wife of Mr. Salt and mother of Paprika and Cinnamon.
* Paprika (Jenna Marie Castle, Corrine Hoffman) – Daughter of Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper and older sister to Cinnamon.
* Cinnamon (Annalivia Balaban) – Son of Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper and younger brother to Paprika.
* Shovel (Stephen Schmidt, Jonathan Press, Thomas Sharkey) – Best friend of Pail, lives in the garden of the *Blue's Clues* house.
* Pail (Marshall Claffy, Julia Wetherell) – Best friend of Shovel, lives in the garden of the *Blue's Clues* house.
* Tickety Tock (Kathryn Avery, Kelly Nigh) – An alarm clock who lives in the *Blue's Clues* house.
* Slippery Soap (Cody Ross Pitts, Patrick Van Wagenen) – A bar of soap who lives in the bathroom sink.
* Magenta (Koyalee Chanda),– A magenta-colored dog who is Blue's best friend from school.
* Periwinkle (Kenny Kim) – A precocious kitten from the city who debuts in "Blue's Big Mystery".
* The Felt Friends – A group of children made from geometric felt shapes.