Mister Rogers' Neighborhood

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was among the most famous, enduring, and fondly-remembered children's television shows. Host Fred Rogers used his gentle charm and mannerisms to communicate with his audience of children. Topics centered on nearly every inconceivable matter of concern to children, ranging from everyday fears related to going to sleep, getting immunizations and disappointment about not getting one's way to losing a loved one to death and physical handicaps. One of his strong beliefs was to not talk down to, patronize, or belittle his children audience when dealing with material.

Rogers used simple songs and, on nearly every show, segments from the Neighborhood of Make-Believe to make his point. A popular part of the show was the "Neighborhood of Make-Believe" segments. The fantasy neighborhood was inhabited by puppet characters including King Friday XIII, Lady Elaine Fairchild and Daniel Striped Tiger.

The program was taped at WQED-TV in Pittsburgh; first-run shows were produced from 1968 to 1976, at which time production was suspended until August 20 1979. New programs were taped through 2001 for broadcast alongside the original 460 episodes the most notable coming in 1991 with Rogers' shows focusing on calming children's fears during the Persian Gulf War.

Big Bird appears in episode #1485 entitled "Mister Rogers Talks About Competition", which originally aired on June 3, 1981.

Caroll Spinney agreed to appear in the episode as Big Bird; when Spinney originally received the script for the show he saw it required him to remove the costume and discuss the inner-workings of the Big Bird puppet. Spinney protested, as he didn't believe in ruining the illusion of Big Bird for the children. Rogers agreed but only under the stipulation that Big Bird’s appearance was restricted to the fantasy segments of the "Neighborhood of Make-Believe", as he didn’t believe in perpetuating the deceitful blur of real and pretend to children presenting the character as real in the “real world”.

While Sesame Street Unpaved mentions that Rogers understood Spinney's concern over showing the children how Big Bird works, Spinney said at some of his book signings (promoting his autobiography, The Wisdom of Big Bird) that he and Fred Rogers argued over the phone for roughly 20 minutes over whether or not to have him tell the kids how he performs Big Bird.