Nickelodeon Blue's Clues & You!: Whose Clues? Blue's Clues! (Lift-The-Flap)

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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 Weisman, Jon (2 August 2006). "Interactive innovator draws raves". Variety . Retrieved 28 July 2021. 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 previous children's TV shows. Even though research demonstrated that children tend to pay less attention to adult male voices, Burns and Patton were chosen as the program's hosts because they were popular with their audience. [34] Daniel Anderson insisted that Burns and Patton were the best actors for their roles out of the hundreds who auditioned, calling them "actors who could mime as demanded by the mixed action and animation format", [60] and reported that there was no evidence that children paid less attention to them than to other parts of the program. [61] He also said that Burns and Patton overcame what he called "attentional bias against men" [60] in three ways: by behaving energetically and childlike; by breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to the audience, often by looking directly into the camera and asking their audience, "Will you help?", [30] and like Fred Rogers, forming a direct relationship to the audience; and by "always doing something". [60] Anderson insisted that by forming a relationship with the audience, the actors' male voice became cues to the audience to pay attention and stated that it was the hosts' style of presentation that determined child attention. [60]

Crawley, Alisha M.;Daniel R. Anderson; Angela Santomero; Alice Wilder; Marsha Williams; Marie K. Evans; Jennings Bryant (June 2002). "Do Children Learn How to Watch Television? The Impact of Extensive Experience With Blue's Clues on Preschool Children's Television Viewing Behavior". Journal of Communication 52 (2): 264–280. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2002.tb02544.x 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 and found a high incidence of ASL use by various characters, but that it was inconsistent, especially in the connection between English words and their corresponding signs. The purpose of signed communication and its connection with ASL and the Deaf community was also not clearly explained. The researchers speculated that hearing children with no previous ASL exposure would become familiar with ASL and with deaf people by these episodes, thus reducing 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 have more opportunities to view positive models of ASL and deaf people. [153] [154] Tracy, Diane. (2002). Blue's Clues for Success: The 8 Secrets Behind a Phenomenal Business. New York: Kaplan Publishing. ISBN 0-7931-5376-X. 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" [15] 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" [15] 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. [15] 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. [16] Conception [ edit ] Moll, George (executive producer). "Behind the Clues: 10 Years with Blue" (2006). Short documentary. Countryline Productions.Regional versions of the show, featuring native hosts, have been produced in other countries. Kevin Duala hosted the United Kingdom version and the show became part of pop culture in South Korea. [128] [129] In total, Blue's Clues was syndicated in 120 countries, and was translated into 15 languages. [39] In 2000, it became one of the first preschool shows to incorporate American Sign Language into its content, with between five and ten signs used consistently in each episode. [130] Blue's Clues won an award from the Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness (GLAD) for promoting deaf awareness in the media. [131] Cultural influence and impact [ edit ] Heffernan, Jennifer (26 January 2007). "Calling Blue: And on That Farm He Had a Cellphone". The New York Times . Retrieved 5 June 2021.

According to Dhingra and her colleagues, the researchers represented the preschool viewer. After coming up with an idea for an episode, the writers met with Alice Wilder, head of the research department for Blue's Clues, to discuss their idea. The research department and writers then discussed if the topic and approach to the topic was appropriate for preschoolers, and if they accepted it, the content of the episode was further developed. They would often bring in outside consultants who were experts in the subject matter and the processes in teaching it to preschoolers. Wilder considered the researchers experts in how the concepts they wanted to present would translate to the medium of television rather than in a classroom or museum, but they considered preschoolers, who evaluated each script from their perspective, to be their " true experts". [93] The writer took the information they gathered from the research department, preschoolers, and experts and wrote a treatment, or detailed outline of the script, which included goals for the entire episode and for each game. [94] The writers, Wilder, and the research team had a treatment meeting, which Dhingra and her colleagues described as "an organized creative brainstorm", [95] which was rooted in the philosophy and mission of the show, the art of good storytelling, and the point of view of their viewers. The goal of the treatment meeting was to give the writers everything they needed to create a workable second draft of the episode script, and to ensure that it fit the needs of their viewers. [93] 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. [47] After months of research and over 1,000 auditions, they hired actor/performer Steve Burns based on the strength of his audition. [47] [48] Burns received the strongest and most enthusiastic response in tests with the young audience. [49] 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". [50] Burns decided to leave the show in the autumn of 2000, departing in January 2001. [51] He was in over 100 episodes of Blue's Clues when his final episodes aired in April 2002. [44] [52] 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." [53] The producers and creators combined concepts from child development and early-childhood education with innovative animation and production techniques that helped their viewers learn, using research conducted thirty years since the debut of Sesame Street in the U.S. Unlike earlier preschool shows, Blue's Clues presented material in a narrative format instead of a magazine format, used repetition to reinforce its curriculum, structured every episode the same way, and revolutionized the genre by inviting their viewers' involvement. a b Norris, Chris (9 February 2004). "Me and You and a Dog Named Blue". Spin . Retrieved 15 June 2021.a b c d Mifflin, Lawrie (3 August 1997). "The Joy of Repetition, Repetition, Repetition". The New York Times . Retrieved 6 June 2021. Wadler, Joyce (23 May 2002). "Public Lives; Searching for Clues in the Land of the Blue Dog". The New York Times . Retrieved 15 June 2021. Blue's Clues for Success: The 8 Secrets Behind a Phenomenal Business". Publishers Weekly. 17 May 2002 . Retrieved 3 June 2021.