Blue's Clues was an children's television show airing on the Nickelodeon family of channels. The show premiered on September 8, 1996 and continues to air today, although production of new episodes ceased by 2006. Versions of the show have been produced in other countries. It was created by a "green team" of producers, Todd Kessler, Angela Santomero, and Traci Paige Johnson, who used concepts learned from child development and early-childhood education research to create a television show that would capture preschool children's attention and help them learn. They used the narrative format in their presentation of material, as opposed to the more traditional magazine format, and structured every episode the same way.
The result, Blue's Clues, has been called "one of the most successful, critically acclaimed, and ground-breaking preschool television series of all time". Author Malcolm Galdwell called the show "perhaps the 'stickiest'—meaning the most irresistible and involving—television show ever". Its innovative use of research, technology, and interactive content has influenced its genre since its debut, including the "gold standard of preschool TV programs" that inspired it, Sesame Street. It became the highest-rated show for preschoolers on commercial television, and received nine Emmy awards. Its efficiency in teaching children using the medium of television has been documented in research studies.
In 1993, Nickelodeon assigned a team of its own producers to create a new television program in the US for young children, using research on early childhood education and the viewing habits of preschoolers. Their goal was to invent a children's television program that would "empower preschoolers to learn through active participation in activities that are grounded in their everyday lives, to redefine the approach to problem-solving for preschoolers in an engaging manner. The producers, Todd Kessler, Angela Santomero and Traci Paige Johnson (whom Brown Johnson, executive creative director at Nickelodeon, called a "green creative team"), were influenced by Sesame Street but wanted to utilize research performed during the 30 years since it debuted. "We wanted to learn from Sesame Street and take it one step further," Angela Santomero said.
The production of Blue's Clues was based upon research that showed that television could be a "powerful educational agent" because for most American children, it was an accessible medium and a "powerful cultural artifact". Since television programs tell stories through pictures, the potential for episodic learning was high. Television, using film techniques, was able to present information from multiple perspectives, in a variety of "real world" contexts, and that television could be an effective method of scientific education for young children. The creators wanted to provide their viewers with more "authentic learning opportunities" by placing problem-solving tasks in the context of storytelling techniques, by slowly increasing the difficulty of these tasks, and by inviting their direct involvement.
The show's creators encouraged participation with their use of repetition. At first, Nickelodeon aired the same episode daily for five days before showing the next one. In field tests, the attention and comprehension of young viewers increased with each repeated viewing. Repetition was built into the structure of each episode; for example, "in an episode called 'Blue's Predictions,' the show's human host, Joe, says some variation of the word 'predict' around 15 times."
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