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Blue's Clues is an American children's television show that premiered on September 8, 1996, on the cable television network Nickelodeon,[1] and ran for a decade, until August 6, 2006. Producers Angela Santomero, Todd Kessler, and Traci Paige Johnson combined concepts from child development and early-childhood education with innovative animation and production techniques that helped their viewers learn. It was hosted originally by Steve Burns, who although a crucial factor in its success, left in 2002 to pursue a music career, and was replaced by Donovan Patton. The show follows an animated blue-spotted dog named Blue as she plays a game with the host and the viewers. Blue's Clues became the highest-rated show for preschoolers on American commercial television and was critical to Nickelodeon's growth. It has been called "one of the most successful, critically acclaimed, and ground-breaking preschool television series of all time".[1] A spin-off called Blue's Room premiered in 2004. The show's producers and creators presented material in a narrative format instead of the more traditional magazine format, used repetition to reinforce its curriculum, and structured every episode the same way. They used research about child development and young children's viewing habits that had been conducted in the thirty years since the debut of Sesame Street in the U.S., and revolutionized the genre by inviting their viewers' involvement. 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, and resembled 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 was familiar to American children, but had a look unlike other children's TV shows. A live production of Blue's Clues, which used many of the production innovations developed by the show's creators, toured the U.S. starting in 1999. As of 2002, over 2 million people had attended over 1,000 performances. By 2002, Blue's Clues had received several awards for excellence in children's programming, educational software, and licensing, and had been nominated for nine Emmy Awards. Versions of the show have been produced in other countries, and it has been syndicated in 120 countries and translated into 15 languages. It was one of the first preschool shows to incorporate American Sign Language into its content. The show's extensive use of research in its development and production process inspired several research studies that have provided evidence for its effectiveness as a learning tool. History Toy versions of the characters Blue and Periwinkle Blue's Clues was developed during a transitional period for children's television. In 1990, Congress had passed the Children's Television Act, which required networks and TV stations to devote a portion of their programming to children's shows, but the legislation did not specify how many hours of programming broadcasters were required to air. It set no guidelines or criteria for educational programs and had no provisions for enforcement. According to author Diane Tracy in her 2002 book Blue's Clues for Success, "The state of children's television was pretty dismal".[2][note 1] Since the late 1960s, PBS was one of the few sources for children's educational television programming in the U.S., and most other US educational TV shows were violent and were created for the purpose of selling toys.[4] The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled in 1997 that the commercial networks had to air educational children's programs for a minimum of three hours per week. The cable network Nickelodeon, which had been airing programs for 6- to 12-year-olds, was not legally bound by this legislation, but complied with it anyway, many years before the laws and regulations were passed.[4]