Barney & Friends is an American children's television series aimed at children from ages 1 to 8, created by Sheryl Leach and produced by HIT Entertainment. It premiered on PBS on April 6, 1992. The series features the title character Barney, a purple anthropomorphic tyrannosaurus rex who conveys educational messages through songs and small dance routines with a friendly, optimistic attitude. Production of new episodes originally ceased on September 18, 2009, although reruns of the series were still shown on many PBS stations in the following years. Reruns aired for 10 years on Sprout from 2005 until 2015. A revival of the series was set for a 2017 launch. However, nothing new has since been announced from this, leading the revival being pushed to an unspecified date.
Maps, Directions, and Place Reviews
Origin and development
Barney was created in 1987 by Sheryl Leach of Dallas, Texas. She came up with the idea for the program while considering TV shows that she felt would be educational and also appeal to her son. Leach then brought together a team who created a series of home videos, Barney and the Backyard Gang, which also starred actress Sandy Duncan in the first three videos.
One day in 1991, the daughter of Connecticut Public Television executive Larry Rifkin rented one of the videos and was mesmerized by it. Rifkin thought the concept could potentially be developed for PBS. Rifkin thought Barney had appeal because he wasn't nearly as neurotic as Big Bird. He pitched it to CPTV president Jerry Franklin, whose preschool son also fell in love with it. Franklin and Rifkin pitched the idea to all of their colleagues with preschoolers, and they all agreed that kids would love a potential Barney show. Franklin and Rifkin convinced Leach to let CPTV revamp the concept for television. The show debuted as Barney & Friends in 1992. The series was produced by CPTV and Lyrick Studios (later bought by HIT Entertainment).
Although the show was a runaway hit, PBS initially opted not to provide funding beyond the initial 30-episode run. When CPTV executives learned this, they wrote letters to their fellow PBS member stations urging them to get PBS to reconsider. The Lyons Group, meanwhile, sent out notices through the Barney Fan Club, telling parents to write letters and make phone calls to their local PBS stations to show their support for Barney & Friends. By the time of the yearly member stations' meeting, station executives across the country were up in arms over the prospect of one of their most popular shows being cancelled. Faced with an atmosphere that Rifkin later described as "like an insurrection," PBS ultimately relented.
For several years, the show was taped at the Color Dynamics Studios facility at Greenville Avenue & Bethany Drive in Allen, Texas, after which it moved to The Studios at Las Colinas in Irving, Texas, and then Carrollton, a suburb of Dallas. The TV series and videos are currently distributed by HIT Entertainment and Universal Studios, while the TV series was produced by WNET from 2006 to 2009. Sheryl Leach left the show in 1998, five years prior to HIT Entertainment buying Lyrick Studios.
Episode format
Opening sequence
The series opens with the theme song (over clips from various episodes) and the title card before it dissolves into the school. The children are seen doing an activity, occasionally relating to the episode's topic. The children imagine something and Barney comes to life from a plush doll, transforming into the "real" Barney, how he appears to the children while they're imagining.
Main sequence
Here, the main plot of the episode takes place. Barney and the children learn about the main topic of the episode, with Baby Bop, B.J., or Riff appearing during the episode and numerous songs themed relating to the subject featured in the series. The roles of Baby Bop, B.J., and Riff have grown larger in later seasons and later episodes venture outside of the school to other places within the neighborhood and to other countries around the world in Season 13.
Closing sequence
Barney concludes with "I Love You" before he dissolves back into his original stuffed form and winks to the audience. After the children discuss what they have learned, the sequence cuts to Barney Says (in Seasons 1-8 and 12 only) where Barney, who is off-screen, narrates what he and his friends had done that day, along with still snapshots from the episode. Then Barney, himself, signs off before the credits roll. In Seasons 3-8, and 12, he later appeared on-screen by saying, "And remember, I love you," and waves goodbye.
Characters and cast
Dinosaurs
Adults
The adults on the show often appear as teachers, storytellers, or other characters.
Multiple appearances
Puppets
A lot of puppets appeared in many seasons. The most notable puppets were:
- Scooter McNutty, a brown squirrel (seasons: 4-6, 1997-2000)
- Miss Etta Kette, a purple bird (seasons: 4-6, 1997-2000)
- Booker T. Bookworm, an orange worm with interests in books (season 5: 1998-1999)
Children
Throughout the series' run, over 100 children have appeared in the series, with most of them from the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Only a small portion of these actors have made notable appearances in media since their roles, including:
- Danielle Vega: played Kim from Season 3 to Season 6
- Demi Lovato: played Angela from Season 7 to Season 8
- Selena Gomez: played Gianna from Season 7 to Season 8
- Debby Ryan: played Debby in Season 10
- Madison Pettis: played Bridget in Season 10
Movies and specials
- Barney in Concert (1991)
- Barney's Imagination Island (1994)
- Barney Live in New York City (1994)
- Barney's Great Adventure (1998) (Theatrical movie, starring Trevor Morgan and Kyla Pratt)
- Barney's Big Surprise (1998)
- Barney: Let's Go to the Zoo (2001)
- Barney's Musical Castle (2001)
- Barney's Colorful World (2004)
Airings
Other than the United States, the series has aired in Canada, Mexico and Latin America, France, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Japan (On English-based DVDs under the name "Let's Play with Barney in English! (????????????!, B?n? to Eigo de asob?!)" and on television as simply "Barney & Friends (????&????, B?n? ando Furenzu!)" ), the Philippines, Turkey, Australia, and New Zealand, among others. Two known co-productions of Barney & Friends have been produced outside of the US. The Israeli co-production (Hebrew: ?????? ?? ????? Hachaverim shel Barney (The Friends of Barney) produced from 1997 to 1999 in Tel Aviv, Israel, was the first of these. Rather than dubbing the original American episodes from Seasons 1-3, the episodes are adapted with a unique set and exclusive child actors. The other co-production was one shot in South Korea from 2001-2003, airing on KBS (under the name "??? ???" (Baniwa Chingudeul (Barney and Friends))). This one, however, adapted the first six seasons (including the first three that the Israel co-production did). It was done in a similar manner as the Israel production.
Music
A majority of the albums of Barney & Friends feature Bob West as the voice of Barney; however, the recent album The Land of Make-Believe has Dean Wendt's voice. Barney's song "I Love You" was one of those used by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay detention camp to coerce the detainees.
The use of the theme song, as a means of inflicting psychological stress, on Iraqi prisoners-of-war, was examined by Jon Ronson in his 2004 book The Men Who Stare At Goats.
Criticism
Although several people, including Yale University researchers Dorothy and Jerome Singer, have concluded that episodes contain a great deal of age-appropriate educational material, calling the program a "model of what preschool television should be", the program has been criticized for a lack of educational value, as well as being repetitive in nature.
The show and its content is often cited as a contributing factor to the perceived sense of "entitlement" seen in the Millennial generation who grew up watching the show as children. One specific criticism is:
His shows do not assist children in learning to deal with negative feelings and emotions. As one commentator puts it, the real danger from Barney is 'denial: the refusal to recognize the existence of unpleasant realities. For along with his steady diet of giggles and unconditional love, Barney offers our children a one-dimensional world where everyone must be happy and everything must be resolved right away.
The creator and performer of the San Diego Chicken mascot, Ted Giannoulas, called Barney a "ubiquitous and insipid creature" in a 1999 court case.
Barney & Friends ranked #50 on TV Guide's 2002 list of the 50 worst TV shows of all time. The show has also been parodied in many forms. (see Anti-Barney humor)
Source of the article : Wikipedia
EmoticonEmoticon