Blue's Clues

***Blue's Clues*** is an American live-action/animated educational children's television series that premiered on Nickelodeon's Nick Jr. block 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 in the United States 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 2011. A revival of the series titled *Blue's Clues & You!* premiered in November 2019.

## Educational goals

The creators and producers' mission of *Blue's Clues* was to "empower, challenge, and build the self-esteem of preschoolers ... while making them laugh". According to Anderson and his colleagues, the show's curriculum was based on "inherent respect for preschoolers and their ability to think and learn while having fun". Anderson and his colleagues stated that *Blue's Clues* was created with the question: What does television teach young children? Kessler, Santomero, and Johnson were influenced by *Mister Rogers' Neighborhood* and by *Sesame Street*, the first children's television program to create a detailed and comprehensive educational curriculum developed from research and use developmental theory, child development, learning theory, and research. According to Anderson, it was essential that the writers and creators of *Blue's Clues* have background and experience in early childhood development theory and research in order to ensure that the audience understood the dialogue, game, and recurrent program elements in each episode. *Blue's Clues* was designed and produced on the assumption that since children are cognitively active when they watch television, a television program could be an effective method of scientific education for young children by telling stories through pictures and by modeling behavior and learning. 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.

The thinking games presented in each episode used what Anderson called "a layered approach" that took the varying capabilities of the audience into account. Santomero said that they used scaffolding and that layering was inherent in the script and design of each game. They purposely presented the problem presented in increasing levels of difficulty, to prevent children from feeling frustrated and to master concepts, experience success, and feel empowered to attempt to solve more challenging concepts presented to them. The producers' goal was that all viewers understood the problem, even if they did not know how to solve it. As a result, the child was temporary frustrated by not knowing the answer because after giving them time to come up with it, child voice-overs provided the answers for them, so that they learned the correct answers, even if they were unable to come up with them. If the child was able to come up with the answers, however, they felt "part of a larger, knowing, child audience" when their answers were confirmed by the voice-overs. The child voice-overs also helped viewers maintain high levels of attention during critical educational portions of the episode and modelled the audience involvement encouraged by the program. The audience was told how they could help problem-solve by the host explaining how, by the child voice-overs modeling verbal participation, and by giving them enough time to respond. According to Johnson, the slow pace of the program was challenging for television directors used to the fast pace of television production and for parents, who praised the pace but expressed concerns that their children would find it boring.