Blue's Clues

Blue's Clues is a daytime children's show that airs on Nickelodeon (in the United States), and also via video on demand on some cable systems. It features live action superimposed on paper-cutout animation similar to that of South Park. more...

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The series follows a blue dog named Blue through her everyday life, providing small children with educational entertainment. The show currently airs on both Nick Jr. and Noggin. The show had aired on Nick Jr. on CBS until September 2006. Image:Blues lg.gif

Format

From 1996 to 2002, Blue's owner was Steve, a non-animated character played by Steven Burns. When Burns chose to leave the show, the character Steve went off to college and his younger brother Joe (played by Donovan Patton) moved in to take care of Blue.

The game of Blue's Clues begins near the beginning of the episode, when the host asks Blue some sort of question. Blue responds by jumping at the screen and marking it with a blue pawprint. The host, with the help of the audience (who are constantly spoken to and asked questions by the host), then searches the house for Blue's three clues. Along the way, the host speaks with other residents of the house, often characters based on inanimate objects such as a side-table drawer, a shaker of salt, and a mailbox. After all three have been found, the host sits in his "thinking chair" and puts the three clues together to form a central image. This image is the answer to the host's original question, which goes along the lines of "What does Blue want to do today?" Blue's Clues also has lots of songs about every event, like "We Just Got a Letter".

The hosts use a few American Sign Language signs during the show, signing words like smart, help, or adventure as they speak them. ASL is not used consistently enough to teach ASL to a child, but those who are already learning ASL may enjoy seeing a tiny modicum of sign in a mainstream program.

Origin

Blue's Clues was created by a creative team led by Todd Kessler -- who was at the time a writer-director -- and producer at Nickelodeon and researcher Angela Santomero. Kessler and Santomero hired cut-out animator Traci Paige Johnson to collaborate on the pilot. (Johnson would eventually provide Blue's voice. A child voice actor filled in for part of season 2.)

Kessler had previously worked on the PBS children's show Sesame Street, and both he and Santomero hoped to build on and improve that model of educational programming. "We wanted to learn from Sesame Street and take it one step further," said Santomero.

"I love Sesame Street," said Kessler. "But I always believed that kids didn't have short attention spans, that they could easily sit still for a half an hour." While Sesame Street was originally organized around short, commercial-like segments, each Blue's Clues show is a single extended narrative.

Read more at Wikipedia.org