Mister Rogers' Neighborhood (sometimes shortened to Mister Rogers) is an American half-hour educational children's television series that was created and hosted by Fred Rogers. The series Misterogers debuted in Canada on October 15, 1962, on CBC Television.[4][5] In 1966, Rogers moved back to the United States creating Misterogers' Neighborhood (sometimes shown as MisteRogers' Neighborhood[citation needed]), later called Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, on the regional Eastern Educational Television Network (EETN, a forerunner of today's American Public Television). The US national debut of the show occurred on February 19, 1968. It aired on NET and its successor, PBS, until August 31, 2001.
The series is aimed primarily at preschool children ages 2 to 5, but it was labelled by PBS as "appropriate for all ages".[6] Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was produced by Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania public broadcaster WQED and Rogers' non-profit production company Family Communications, Inc., previously known as Small World Enterprises prior to 1971; the company was renamed The Fred Rogers Company after Rogers' death (it has since been renamed again to Fred Rogers Productions as of 2019).[7][8] In May 1997, the series surpassed Captain Kangaroo as the longest-running children's television series,[9][2] a record the series held until June 2003, when Sesame Street beat Mister Rogers' record. The series could be seen in reruns on most PBS stations until August 31, 2007,[10] when it began to be removed by various PBS stations, and was then permanently removed from the daily syndicated schedule by PBS after August 29, 2008.
Eleven years after Mister Rogers' Neighborhood concluded, PBS debuted an animated spin-off, Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. A 50th-anniversary tribute show, hosted by actor Michael Keaton (who got his start on the show), titled Mister Rogers: It's You I Like, premiered on PBS stations nationwide on March 6, 2018.[11]
