1967: Mister Rogers Moves Into the Neighborhood

Born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Fred McFeely Rogers was born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania on March 20, 1928. After earning his bachelor’s degree in music from Rollins College in 1951, he began working for NBC for a short time in New York. In 1953, he began working at the new public television station WQED for the show, The Children’s Corner where he learned that wearing sneakers were a lot quieter on the set than his dress shoes. In 1961, Rogers moved to Toronto, Ontario to work on a new 15-minute show called Misterogers for CBC Television. In 1966, Rogers went back to WQED to create Misteroger’s Neighborhood but it was cancelled due to lack of funding less than a year later. However, the Sears Roebuck Foundation chipped in funding for the show and the first nationwide episode of his who premiered on this day in 1967. In 1970, the show was renamed Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. The series ended again in 1976 but was picked up three years later when Rogers felt as if his work speaking to children wasn’t done. The show continued from 1979 through 2001. Rogers passed away on February 27, 2003. In 2011, PBS created an animated “spinoff” of the show called Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood featuring the characters Rogers had created in his “land of make-believe” and in 2019, Tom Hanks portrayed Rogers in the film, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” a role that earned him an Oscar nomination.