Fred Rogers

At 74 years old, Fred Rogers has this physical status:

Career

Rogers wanted to go back to seminary after college, but instead decided to go into the nascent medium of television after seeing a television at his parents' house in 1951 during their senior year at Rollins College. "I went into television because I hated it so much," he said in a CNN interview, and "I think there is some way of nourishing those who will watch and listen." After graduating in 1951, he worked at NBC in New York City as the floor manager of Your Hit Parade, Gabby Hayes' children's show, and Gabby Hayes' children's show, as well as an assistant producer of The Voice of Firestone.

Rogers returned to Pittsburgh in 1953 to work as a program manager at WQED, a public television station. Josie Carey collaborated with him on the production of The Children's Corner, which Carey hosted. Rogers created puppets, characters, and music for the show off-camera. During this period, he used many of the puppet characters developed during this period, such as Daniel the Striped Tiger (named after WQED's station manager, Dorothy Daniel, who gave Rogers a tiger puppet before the show's premiere), King Friday XIII, Queen Sara Saturday (named after Rogers' wife), Henrietta, and Lady Elaine. Ernie Coombs, a children's television entertainer, was a volunteer puppeteer. In 1955, the Children's Corner was recognized as the best locally produced children's program on NBC, and it was broadcast nationally on NBC. Rogers attended Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and was elected a Presbyterian minister in 1963 while doing on the show. He attended the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Child Development, where he began working with child psychologist Margaret McFarland, who, according to Rogers' biographer Maxwell King, became his "key advisor and collaborator" and "child education expert" and "child education guru." McFarland introduced a large part of Rogers' "thinking about and admiring children." Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was his advisor on the bulk of Mister Rogers' scripts and songs for 30 years.

Rogers was hired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Toronto in 1963 to produce and host Misterogers' 15-minute black-and-white children's program Misterogers, which ran from 1963 to 1967. It was the first time Rogers appeared on camera. Fred Rainsberry, the CBC's children's programming head, fought back, telling Rogers, "Fred, I've heard you talk with children." "You'll be putting yourself on the radio." Coombs joined Rogers in Toronto as an assistant puppeteer. Rogers appeared on Coombs' television show Butternut Square from 1964 to 1967. Despite a promising career with CBC and no job prospects in Pittsburgh, he obtained the rights to Misterogers in 1967 and returned to Pittsburgh with his wife, two young children, and the sets he created. On Rogers' advice, Coombs stayed in Toronto and became Rogers' Canadian equivalent of a well-known television celebrity, creating the long-running children's program Mr. Dressup, which ran from 1967 to 1996. Rogers' work with CBC "aided shape and refine the concept and style of his later PBS (PBS) in the United States."

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood (also known as the Neighborhood), a half-hour educational children's program starring Rogers, first aired nationally in 1968 and lasted for 895 episodes. National Educational Television (NET), which later became the Public Broadcasting Service, was videotaped at WQED in Pittsburgh and broadcast by National Educational Television (NET), which later became the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). There were 180 black-and-white episodes in the first season. PBS, the Sears-Roebuck Foundation, and other charities all sponsored each subsequent season. The average television household, or 680,000 households, was about 7% when it came to an end in December 2000, and it aired on 384 PBS stations. Its ratings stood at 1.9 percent, or 1.8 million homes, when it reached their high in 1985-1996. PBS first aired in 2001, but PBS soon began to air reruns, and by 2016, it was the third-longest running program in PBS history.

Many of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood's set and props, including the trolley, the sneakers, and the castle, were made for Rogers' show in Toronto by CBC designers and producers. "The program also included the majority of the program's unique features, such as the program's slow speed and the host's quiet demeanor." For the entire duration of the program, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood "remained virtually unchanged." Every episode begins with a camera's-eye view of a neighborhood model, followed by panning in closer to a house model, when a piano player with the theme tune, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" "Alone's performance by music director Johnny Costa and inspired by a Beethoven sonata" is performed. When Rogers opens the room to greet his visitors by changing his suit jacket to a cardigan (knitted by his mother) and his dress shoes to sneakers, "complete with a shoe tossed from one hand to another." Mr. Rogers' home is relocated to visit another location, with the camera panning back to the neighborhood model and zooming in to the new location as he approaches it. Mr. Rogers leaves and returns to his house after this segment concludes, showing that it is time to explore Make-Believe's neighborhood. Mr. Rogers steps out and leads the tour as the Trolley comes out. As it approaches Make-Believe, the camera follows it down a tunnel in the back wall of the house. The stories and lessons taught revolve around a week's worth of episodes that involve puppet and human characters. The Trolley returns to the same tunnel from which it appeared, reappearing in Mr. Rogers' house at the conclusion of the tour. Before ending the episode, he speaks to the viewers. He often feeds his fish, washe cleans up any props he has used, and returns to the front room, where he performs the closing song while changing back to his dress shoes and jacket. As the episode comes to an end, he leaves the front door and pans across the neighborhood's neighborhood model.

Young children's social and emotional needs were highlighted in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, but Sesame Street, another PBS show that premiered in 1969, did not emphasize cognitive development. "While both shows target the same preschooler audience and prepare children for kindergarten, Sesame Street focuses on teaching the child's social and emotional skills, as Mister Rogers Neighborhood focuses on the child's social and moral reasoning." Rogers used earlier childhood education techniques taught by his mentor Margaret McFarland, Benjamin Spock, Erik Erikson, and T. Berry Brazelton in his lessons, but Sesame Street spent less money on research than Sesame Street. Rogers taught young children about citizenship, tolerance, sharing, and self-worth "in a reassuring tone and leisurely cadence," the Washington Post wrote. He addressed topics such as the death of a family's sibling rivalry, the birth of a baby in a family, moving and enrolling in a new school, and divorce. For example, he produced a special segment that dealt with Robert F. Kennedy's assassination that aired on June 7, 1968, only days after the assassination took place.

According to King, the whole process of bringing each episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood together was "painstaking" and Rogers' participation in the program was "astounding." Rogers narrated and edited all of the episodes, performed the piano and sang for the majority of the songs, authored 200 songs and 13 operas, directed all of the major puppet shows, hosted every episode, and approved every detail of the program. The puppets made for Make-Believe's Neighborhood "included an extraordinary variety of personalities." They were simply puppets, but they were "complex, complicated, and completely honest beings." Rogers founded Family Communications, Inc. (FCI), now The Fred Rogers Company, in 1971, to produce the Neighborhood, other services, and non-broadcast materials.

Rogers' Neighborhood stopped being produced in 1975 to concentrate on adult programs. On PBS, reruns of Neighborhood will continue to air. The decision caught several of his coworkers and supporters "off guard," according to the King. Rogers continued to consult with McFarland on child growth and early childhood education, but she did not have to do so. Rogers returned to produce the Neighborhood in 1979 after a nearly five-year absence; King calls the latest it "stronger and more sophisticated than ever." By the program's second run in the 1980s, it was "such a cultural touchstone that it had inspired several parodies," most notably Eddie Murphy's parody on Saturday Night Live in the early 1980s.

Rogers retired from television production in 2001 at the age of 73, but reruns have continued to air. For many years, he and FCI had been producing about two to three weeks of new programs per year, "filling the rest of his time slots from a library of about 300 shows made since 1979." On August 31, 2001, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood's last original episode aired.

Rogers testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Communications in 1969, which was chaired by Democratic Senator John Pastore of Rhode Island. President Lyndon Johnson had suggested a $20 million bill for the development of PBS before he left office, but Richard Nixon, his successor, wanted to reduce the budget to $10 million. Despite the fact that Rogers was not widely known, he was chosen to testify because of his ability to make convincing arguments and his emotional connection with his audience. Rogers' testimony, which was televised and has since been watched by millions of people on the internet, has helped to gain support for PBS for many years. Rogers' testimony, according to King, was "considered one of the most persuasive pieces of evidence ever presented before congress" and one of the most effective pieces of video presentation ever shot." It brought Pastore and King to tears, but also, according to King, has been investigated by public relations and academics. PBS' Congressional funding for PBS has increased from $9 million to $22 million. Rogers was appointed chair of the White House Conference on Children and Youth in 1970 by Nixon.

Rogers wrote, produced, and hosted Old Friends, a 30-minute interview program for adults on PBS in 1978, while Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was on hiatus, and New Friends became a new friend. It was 20 episodes long. Hoagy Carmichael, Helen Hayes, Milton Berle, Lorin Hollander, poet Robert Frost's daughter Lesley, and Willie Stargell were among Rogers' guests.

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

Rogers did "scores of interviews." Though he's reluctant to appear on television talk shows, the host would often "charm the host" with his quick wit and ability to ad-lib on a moment's notice. Rogers was dubbed "one of the country's most coveted commencement speakers" after giving over 150 addresses. Rogers would "agonize over a speech," his friend and colleague David Newell predicted, and King Rogers would have been at least cautioned during his talks, which were about children, television, education, his opinion of the world, how to make the world a better place, and his quest for self-knowledge. His voice was quiet and casual, but "commanded attention" was summoned. In several speeches, including those he gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999 and his final commencement address at Dartmouth College in 2002, he urged his followers to remain seated and reflect for a moment about someone who had a positive effect on them.

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