People

Samuel Chamberlin Newbury, ‘Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’ producer, dies at 69

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Samuel Chamberlin Newbury, who served as director of productions for Fred Rogers Co. for nearly three decades, died May 22 at his home in Pittsburgh of cancer. He was 69. Newbury is best remembered as the producer of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and as right-hand man of the show’s creator and namesake, Fred Rogers. He worked for Rogers’ production company Family Communications, Inc. (now known as Fred Rogers Co.) for 28 years from 1986 until his retirement in 2012.

Programs/Content

Fred Rogers goes viral with “Garden of Your Mind” video remix

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An Auto-Tuned video of the late PBS icon Fred Rogers is going viral, with more than 700,000 views as of Friday (June 8) afternoon. The three-minute video was remixed by Symphony of Science’s John Boswell for PBS Digital Studios. “When we discovered video mash-up artist John D. Boswell, aka melodysheep, on YouTube,” the PBS studio said in a statement, “we immediately wanted to work together. Turns out that he is a huge Mister Rogers Neighborhood fan, and was thrilled at the chance to pay tribute to one of our heroes.” It’s the first in a series of PBS icon remixes.

Programs/Content

In master control, Fred Rogers re-enters my life

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Mister Rogers was one of the first programs that I can remember watching. I was, of course, part of the show’s target demographic back then. I can’t recall much from my preschool years, but I do know that I loved the trolley, I loved the neighborhood and I loved Fred Rogers.Like many early loves, it faded with age and distance. I moved on to programs intended for older kids: flashier, action-oriented, violent in the ways that caregivers and watchdogs lament and children adore. For the most part, I forgot about Fred and his neighborhood, reminded only on occasion by the parodies that proliferated in the ’80s as yesterday’s innocents grew into sarcasm and despair.

Programs/Content

Fred Rogers and the significance of story

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The late George Gerbner, a leading scholar of TV program content, wrote this article for the 40th anniversary of Mister Rogers Neighborhood, but it served the additional purpose of explaining why he founded the Cultural Environment Movement in 1996 after leaving the University of Pennsylvania, where he was dean of the Annenberg School of Communication. The article appeared in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood: Children, Television and Fred Rogers, a collection of diverse essays published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. There is a story about a mother who said to her child, “I wish you would change your behavior.” The child said, “That’s all right, Mother; Mr. Rogers loves me as I am.” Forty years in children’s television — with an approach that is so different from so many other programs— is an event of historic significance.