Fred Rogers

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood (also called the Neighborhood), a half-hour educational children's program starring Rogers, began airing nationally in 1968 and ran for 895 episodes. It was videotaped at WQED in Pittsburgh and broadcast by National Educational Television (NET), which later became the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Its first season had 180 black-and-white episodes. Each subsequent season, filmed in color and funded by PBS, the Sears-Roebuck Foundation, and other charities, consisted of 65 episodes. By the time it ended production in December 2000, its average rating was about 0.7% of television households or 680,000 homes, and it aired on 384 PBS stations. At its peak in 1985–1986, its ratings were 2.1%, or 1.8 million homes. The last original episode aired in 2001, but PBS continued to air reruns, and by 2016 it was the third-longest-running program in PBS history.

Many of the sets and props in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, like the trolley, the sneakers, and the castle, were created for Rogers' show in Toronto by CBC designers and producers. The program also "incorporated most of the highly imaginative elements that later became famous", such as its slow pace and its host's quiet manner. The format of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood "remained virtually unchanged" for the entire run of the program. Every episode begins with a camera's-eye view of a model of a neighborhood, then panning in closer to a representation of a house while a piano instrumental of the theme song, "Won't You be My Neighbor?", performed by music director Johnny Costa and inspired by a Beethoven sonata, is played. The camera zooms in to a model representing Mr. Rogers' house, then cuts to the house's interior and pans across the room to the front door, which Rogers opens as he sings the theme song to greet his visitors while changing his suit jacket to a cardigan (knitted by his mother, Nancy) and his dress shoes to sneakers, "complete with a shoe tossed from one hand to another". The episode's theme is introduced, and Mr. Rogers leaves his home to visit another location, the camera panning back to the neighborhood model and zooming in to the new location as he enters it. Once this segment ends, Mr. Rogers leaves and returns to his home, indicating that it is time to visit the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Mr. Rogers proceeds to the window seat by the trolley track and sets up the action there as the Trolley comes out. The camera follows it down a tunnel in the back wall of the house as it enters the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. The stories and lessons take place over a week's worth of episodes and involve puppets and human characters. The end of the visit occurs when the Trolley returns to the same tunnel from which it emerged, reappearing in Mr. Rogers' home. He then talks to the viewers before concluding the episode. He often feeds his fish, cleans up any props he has used, and returns to the front room, where he sings the closing song while changing back into his dress shoes and jacket. He exits the front door as he ends the song, and the camera zooms out of his home and pans across the neighborhood model as the episode ends.

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood emphasized young children's social and emotional needs, and unlike another PBS show, Sesame Street, which premiered in 1969, did not focus on cognitive learning. Writer Kathy Merlock Jackson said, "While both shows target the same preschool audience and prepare children for kindergarten, Sesame Street concentrates on school-readiness skills while Mister Rogers Neighborhood focuses on the child's developing psyche and feelings and sense of moral and ethical reasoning". The Neighborhood also spent fewer resources on research than Sesame Street, but Rogers used early childhood education concepts taught by his mentor Margaret McFarland, Benjamin Spock, Erik Erikson, and T. Berry Brazelton in his lessons. As The Washington Post noted, Rogers taught young children about civility, tolerance, sharing, and self-worth "in a reassuring tone and leisurely cadence". He tackled difficult topics such as the death of a family pet, sibling rivalry, the addition of a newborn into a family, moving and enrolling in a new school, and divorce. For example, he wrote a special segment that dealt with the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy that aired on June 7, 1968, two days after the assassination occurred.

According to King, the process of putting each episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood together was "painstaking" and Rogers' contribution to the program was "astounding". Rogers wrote and edited all the episodes, played the piano and sang for most of the songs, wrote 200 songs and 13 operas, created all the characters (both puppet and human), played most of the significant puppet roles, hosted every episode, and produced and approved every detail of the program. The puppets created for the Neighborhood of Make-Believe "included an extraordinary variety of personalities". They were simple puppets but "complex, complicated, and utterly honest beings". In 1971, Rogers formed Family Communications, Inc. (FCI, now Fred Rogers Productions), to produce the Neighborhood, other programs, and non-broadcast materials.

In 1975, Rogers stopped producing Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood to focus on adult programming. Reruns of the Neighborhood continued to air on PBS. King reports that the decision caught many of his coworkers and supporters "off guard". Rogers continued to confer with McFarland about child development and early childhood education, however. In 1979, after an almost five-year hiatus, Rogers returned to producing the Neighborhood; King calls the new version "stronger and more sophisticated than ever". King writes that by the program's second run in the 1980s, it was "such a cultural touchstone that it had inspired numerous parodies", most notably Eddie Murphy's parody on Saturday Night Live in the early 1980s.

Rogers retired from producing the Neighborhood in 2001 at age 73, although reruns continued to air. He and FCI had been making about two or three weeks of new programs per year for many years, "filling the rest of his time slots from a library of about 300 shows made since 1979". The final original episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood aired on August 31, 2001.

Other work and appearances

In 1969, Rogers testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Communications, which was chaired by Democratic Senator John Pastore of Rhode Island. U.S. President Lyndon Johnson had proposed a $20 million bill for the creation of PBS before he left office, but his successor, Richard Nixon, wanted to cut the funding to $10 million. Even though Rogers was not yet nationally known, he was chosen to testify because of his ability to make persuasive arguments and to connect emotionally with his audience. The clip of Rogers' testimony, which was televised and has since been viewed by millions of people on the internet, helped to secure funding for PBS for many years afterward. According to King, Rogers' testimony was "considered one of the most powerful pieces of testimony ever offered before Congress, and one of the most powerful pieces of video presentation ever filmed". It brought Pastore to tears and, according to King, has been studied by public relations experts and academics. Congressional funding for PBS increased from $9 million to $22 million. In 1970, Nixon appointed Rogers as chair of the White House Conference on Children and Youth.

In 1978, while on hiatus from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Rogers wrote, produced, and hosted a 30-minute interview program for adults on PBS called Old Friends... New Friends. It lasted 20 episodes. Rogers' guests included Hoagy Carmichael, Helen Hayes, Milton Berle, Lorin Hollander, poet Robert Frost's daughter Lesley, and Willie Stargell.

In September 1987, Rogers visited Moscow to appear as the first guest on the long-running Soviet children's TV show Good Night, Little Ones! with host Tatyana Vedeneyeva. The appearance was broadcast in the Soviet Union on December 7, coinciding with the Washington Summit meeting between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan in Washington, D.C. Vedeneyeva visited the set of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood in November, the occasion taped and later aired in March 1988 as part of Rogers' program. In 1994, Rogers wrote, produced, and hosted a special for PBS called Fred Rogers' Heroes, which featured interviews and portraits of four people from across the country who were having a positive impact on children and education. The first time Rogers appeared on television as an actor, and not as himself, was in a 1996 episode of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, playing a preacher.

Rogers gave "scores of interviews". Though reluctant to appear on television talk shows, he would usually "charm the host with his quick wit and ability to ad-lib on a moment's notice". Rogers was "one of the country's most sought-after commencement speakers", making over 150 speeches. His friend and colleague David Newell reported that Rogers would "agonize over a speech", and King reported that Rogers was at his least guarded during his speeches, which were about children, television, education, his view of the world, how to make the world a better place, and his quest for self-knowledge. His tone was quiet and informal but "commanded attention". In many speeches, including the ones he made accepting a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 1997, for his induction into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1999, and his final commencement speech at Dartmouth College in 2002, he instructed his audiences to remain silent and think for a moment about someone who had a good influence on them.

Sexuality

According to biographer Michael Long in a 2014 HuffPost essay, Rogers' sexuality had long been a topic of curiosity due to his lack of traditional machismo. The 2018 documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor? featured an interview with François Clemmons, the gay actor who played Officer Clemmons on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, in which he denied that Rogers was gay or that he had ever gotten a "gay vibe" from him. According to the 2015 biography The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers by Maxwell King, Rogers once told openly gay friend Dr. William Hirsch that he "must be right smack in the middle" of a sexuality scale because "I have found women attractive, and I have found men attractive." This excerpt resurfaced in 2019 and led many social media users to celebrate him as bisexual, though there is no record of him identifying as such during his lifetime.

Children's books

Our Small World (with Josie Carey, illustrated by Norb Nathanson), 1954, Reed and Witting, OCLC 236163646

The Elves, the Shoemaker, & the Shoemaker's Wife (illustrated by Richard Hefter), 1973, Small World Enterprises, OCLC 969517

The Matter of the Mittens, 1973, Small World Enterprises, OCLC 983991

Speedy Delivery (illustrated by Richard Hefter), 1973, Hubbard, OCLC 11464480

Henrietta Meets Someone New (illustrated by Jason Art Studios), 1974, Golden Press, OCLC 950967676

Mister Rogers Talks About, 1974, Platt & Munk, OCLC 1093164

Time to Be Friends, 1974, Hallmark Cards, OCLC 1694547

Everyone is Special (illustrated by Jason Art Studios), 1975, Western Publishing, OCLC 61280957

Tell Me, Mister Rogers, 1975, Platt & Munk, OCLC 1525780

The Costume Party (illustrated by Jason Art Studios), 1976, Golden Press, OCLC 3357187

Planet Purple (illustrated by Dennis Hockerman), 1986, Texas Instruments, ISBN 978-0-89512-092-2

If We Were All the Same (illustrated by Pat Sustendal), 1987, Random House, OCLC 15083194

A Trolley Visit to Make-Believe (illustrated by Pat Sustendal), 1987, Random House, OCLC 17237650

Wishes Don't Make Things Come True (illustrated Pat Sustendal), 1987, Random House, OCLC 15196769

No One Can Ever Take Your Place (illustrated by Pat Sustendal), 1988, Random House, OCLC 990550735

When Monsters Seem Real (illustrated by Pat Sustendal), 1988, Random House, OCLC 762290817

You Can Never Go Down the Drain (illustrated by Pat Sustendal), 1988, Random House, ISBN 978-0-394-80430-9

The Giving Box (illustrated by Jennifer Herbert), 2000, Running Press, OCLC 45616325

Good Weather or Not (with Hedda Bluestone Sharapan, illustrated by James Mellet), 2005, Family Communications, OCLC 31597516

Josephine the Short Neck-Giraffe, 2006, Family Communications, OCLC 1048459379

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: The Poetry of Mister Rogers Neighborhood (illustrated by Luke Flowers), 2009, Quirk Books, OCLC 1042097615

First Experiences series illustrated by Jim Judkis

Going to Day Care, 1985, Putnam, OCLC 11397421

The New Baby, 1985, Putnam, OCLC 11470082

Going to the Potty, 1986, Putnam, OCLC 1123224708

Going to the Doctor, 1986, Putnam, OCLC 12751383

Making Friends, 1987, Putnam, OCLC 1016110382

Moving, 1987, Putnam, OCLC 13526459

Going to the Hospital, 1988, Putnam, OCLC 16472458

When a Pet Dies, 1988, Putnam, OCLC 16130718

Going on an Airplane, 1989, Putnam, OCLC 18589040

Going to the Dentist, 1989, Putnam, OCLC 17954325

Let's Talk About It series

Going to the Hospital, 1977, Family Communications, OCLC 11287782

Having an Operation, 1977, Family Communications, OCLC 11394237

So Many Things To See!, 1977, Family Communications, OCLC 704507774

Wearing a Cast, 1977, Family Communications, OCLC 11287804

Adoption, 1993, Putnam, OCLC 608811678

Divorce, 1994, Putnam, OCLC 228437876

Extraordinary Friends, 2000, Putnam, OCLC 40838701

Stepfamilies, 2001, Putnam, OCLC 35192315