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 until 2006. 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. Because Nickelodeon co-owned Noggin when the channel was launched, it aired a variety of shows from its archive library on Noggin, including reruns of Blue's Clues.
Format[]
In The Tipping Point, author Malcolm Gladwell called the show "sticky," and described its format:
Nickelodeon researcher Daniel R. 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, in the form of spoken or physical response from the audience, and the mastery of thinking skills were encouraged by the use of repetition, both within the structure of individual episodes and across multiple episodes. The producers used a variety of formal features, which were auditory, and content features, which consisted of invitations given to the audience, such as "Will you help?" The features were also in the form of both recurrent and unique formats and content. The purpose of the recurrent formats and content, which were similar in every episode, was to increase viewers' attention, comprehension, and participation during key educational lessons.
Nickelodeon originally aired the same episode daily for five days before showing the next one. The producers believed this telecast strategy empowered young children by giving them many opportunities to master the content and problems presented to them.
History on Noggin[]
The show joined Noggin to celebrate its launch on February 2, 1999, along with a few other shows. It aired during the preschool morning hours.
However, it and its spinoff, Blue's Room left when the original Noggin channel closed on September 27, 2009. It continued to air on the Nick Jr. Channel until 2019. A reboot called Blue's Clues & You! currently airs.
