| It's a Sad Day in the Neighborhood | |
|
November
12, 2000
Next month, on the set of 'Mr. Rogers Neighborhood' at the WQED studios in Oakland, Fred Rogers will hang up his famous cardigan sweater and take off his tennis shoes for the last time.
"After 50 years in television and 33 years as the creator and host of 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood,' America's longest running children's television program, 71-year-old Fred Rogers is turning his attention to his Web sites, publications and special museum programs. His gentle advice will also continue to live on in reruns.
"Fred Rogers is beginning a new chapter in his outstanding career as an educator and role model for children and adults," said the statement from Family Communications, which produces the show. "Fred is not retiring. He is expanding his neighborhood with endeavors that will continue to build a brighter tomorrow for future generations of children."
Mister Rogers, as he will be forever known, has produced about 10 new episodes in each of the last few years, and almost 1,000 programs have been recorded in all. Most shows now broadcast on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) stations are repeats, said George Miles, president of WQED in Pittsburgh, the station where the show is filmed.
"Fred has said that these programs are basically evergreens," Miles said. "Many of the programs go back many number of years, but the messages are the same."Born Fred McFeely Rogers in 1928, in the western Pennsylvania town of Latrobe near Pittsburgh, Rogers' television career began in 1951 when he was hired as an assistant producer at NBC. In 1953 he moved back to Pittsburgh to co-produce a program called The Children's Corner, the show where several several of the famous Mister Rogers' characters made their first appearance - among them Daniel Striped Tiger, King Friday XIII, Lady Elaine Fairchilde and X the Owl.
In 1963, opportunity took him to Toronto where he created a series of fifteen-minute children's shows called Mister Rogers. The program was set in a fantasy neighborhood full of puppets except for Mr. Rogers and a guest, and was the beginnings of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Pittsburgh was in his blood, however, and Fred Rogers returned home in 1966 where, at WQED, he incorporated the fifteen-minute segments from Mister Rogers into a half hour show which he began hosting in 1967. PBS began distributing Mister Rogers Neighborhood nationally the next year.
This is not the end of an era, however. Mister Rogers' Neighborhood will live on in reruns and through a variety of special projects. A hands-on museum exhibit, created by the Pittsburgh Children's Museum and Family Communications, features the show and its puppets and is currently touring Children's Museums across the country. A new exhibit also opened at the Carnegie Science Center last month. The Sky Above Mister Rogers' Neighborhood is a planetarium program which introduces preschoolers to the wonders of the night sky, starring Mister Rogers and characters from the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Mr. Rogers has also just published a book, The Giving Box: Create a Tradition of Giving With Your Children, and plans more books, multimedia presentations and possibly even a radio show. He will also continue to spend time providing personal responses to each and every child who writes to him. "I never want to be so busy that I can't answer the mail," Rogers says.
We have several letters here at our house that can attest to that!
Next page > Mister Rogers on the
Web
