Weisman, Jon (2 August 2006). "Interactive innovator draws raves". Variety . Retrieved 28 July 2021. Lee, Felicia R. (22 April 2000). "A Children's Adventure in a Deaf World". The New York Times . Retrieved 29 December 2021. Troseth, Georgene L.; Megan M. Saylor. Allison H. Archer. (May/June 2006). "Young Children's Use of Video as a Source of Socially Relevant Information". Child Development 77 (3): 786–799. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00903.x

Moore, Frazier (June 15, 1998). "Success of 'Blue's Clues' is no mystery". SouthCoastToday.com . Retrieved November 12, 2020.Moll, George (executive producer). "Behind the Clues: 10 Years with Blue" (2006). Short documentary. Countryline Productions. 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. Lawrie Mifflin (August 9, 1996). "U.S. Mandates Educational TV for Children". The New York Times. p.16 . Retrieved March 14, 2010. The 2002 studies demonstrated that experience with watching one TV series affects how children watch other programs, especially in the way they interact with them. [141] They also showed that since children are selective in the material they attend to and that their interaction increases with comprehension and mastery, children tend to pay more attention to novel information and interact more with material they have seen before and mastered. According to Crawley and her colleagues, Blue's Clues demonstrated that television could empower and influence children's long-term motivation for and a love of learning. As they stated, "One need only to watch children watch Blue’s Clues to realize that they respond to it with enormous enthusiasm". [146] Blue's Clues". The Peabody Awards. 2001. Archived from the original on 2014-10-06 . Retrieved 29 December 2021.

a b c d e f g h i j Schmelzer, Randi (6 August 2006). "Tale of the Pup: Innovative Skein Leads Way to Preschool TV boom". Variety . Retrieved 6 June 2021. The thinking games presented in each episode used what Anderson called "a layered approach" [86] 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. [86] [69] If the child was able to come up with the answers, however, they felt "part of a larger, knowing, child audience" [86] when their answers were confirmed by the voice-overs. [86] 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. [34] [69] 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. [30] Tracy, Diane. (2002). Blue's Clues for Success: The 8 Secrets Behind a Phenomenal Business. New York: Kaplan Publishing. ISBN 0-7931-5376-X.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] a b Santomero, Angela (21 February 2018). "I Admired Mr. Rogers As a Mentor from Afar – Now I'm Walking in His Sneakers". USA Today . Retrieved 4 August 2021. 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 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 ] Pedersen, Erik (26 August 2019). " 'Blue's Clues & You' Teaser & Premiere Date: Ex-Hosts Return For First Episode". Deadline. Archived from the original on 2019-08-27 . Retrieved 29 December 2021.

Kirkorian, Heather L.; Ellen A. Wartella; Daniel R. Anderson. (Spring 2008). "Media and Young Children's Learning". The Future of Children 18 (1): 39–61 doi:10.1353/foc.0.0002 a b Kiesewetter, John (29 April 2002). " 'Blue's Clues' puts on new host, new shirts". Cincinnati Enquirer. Archived from the original on 2013-01-02 . Retrieved 15 June 2021. According to Tracy, Wilder, who had a doctorate in educational psychology, reinvented the role of research in children's television, and helped train the writers and animators to trust and use research. Wilder also developed the curriculum that guided the program's script development and implemented its formative research. [34] [35] Anderson, Daniel R.; Jennings Bryant; Alice Wilder; Angela Santomero; Marsha Williams; Alisha M. Crawley. (2000). "Researching Blue's Clues: Viewing Behavior and Impact". Media Psychology 2 (2): 179–194. doi:10.1207/S1532785XMEP0202 4Blue'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. [25] [84] These learning opportunities included the use of mnemonics in the form of mantras and songs, and what Tracy called "metacognitive wrap-up" [84] 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. [85] 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 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. Fisch, Shalom M. (2004). Children's Learning from Educational Television: Sesame Street and Beyond. Mahwah, New Jersey.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, p. 199. ISBN 0-8058-3936-4 Goodall, Gloria (29 September 2000). " 'Blue's Clues' Movie, a Video Treat". Christian Science Monitor . Retrieved 29 December 2021.