Early work Rogers wanted to enter
seminary after college, but instead chose to go into the nascent medium of television after experiencing TV at his parents' home in 1951, during his senior year at
Rollins College. In a
CNN interview, he said, "I went into television because I hated it so, and I thought there's some way of using this fabulous instrument to nurture those who would watch and listen". After graduating in 1951, he worked at
NBC in New York City as floor director of
Your Hit Parade,
The Kate Smith Hour, and
Gabby Hayes's children's show, and as an assistant producer of
The Voice of Firestone. In 1953, Rogers returned to Pittsburgh to work as a program developer at
public television station
WQED.
Josie Carey worked with him to develop the children's show ''The Children's Corner'', which Carey hosted. Rogers worked off-camera to develop puppets, characters, and music for the show. He used many puppet characters developed during this time, 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), X the Owl, Henrietta, and Lady Elaine, in his later work. Children's television entertainer
Ernie Coombs was an assistant puppeteer. While working on the show, Rogers attended Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1963. He also 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 guru". Much of Rogers' "thinking about and appreciation for children was shaped and informed" by McFarland. It was the first time Rogers appeared on camera. CBC's children's programming head Fred Rainsberry insisted on it, telling Rogers, "Fred, I've seen you talk with kids. Let's put you yourself on the air". Coombs joined Rogers in Toronto as an assistant puppeteer. On Rogers' recommendation, Coombs remained in Toronto and became Rogers' Canadian equivalent of an iconic television personality, creating the children's program
Mr. Dressup, which ran from 1967 to 1996. Rogers' work for CBC "helped shape and develop the concept and style of his later program for the
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the U.S."
''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. in 1969 ''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. 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",
Other work and appearances before the
Senate Subcommittee on Communications, chaired by
John Pastore, on May 1, 1969. As part of his testimony, he recites the lyrics to "
What Do You Do with the Mad that You Feel?" 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. in 1980 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. 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", 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". ==Personal life==