Mister Rogers' Neighborhood Premiered 53 Years Ago Today

On February 19th 1968, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood debuted on the Eastern Educational Television Network, a regional concern that would later become a part of PBS. The show originated six years ealier as Misterogers on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and as we see in this original opening for the U.S. premiere, it retains that odd grammatical choice of combining Mister with Rogers. They must have eventually decided that an educational show should be able to write its own name properly.

This glimpse at the first-ever U.S. episode is already strikingly familiar — it opens with "It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood," the incomparably kind Fred Rogers still changes his clothes and checks in gently with his young pre-school aged viewers to see how they're doing, and he closes the show with a sing-song reminder that he will be back "Tomorrow." (It wasn't until 1972 that Rogers began closing the show with "It's Such a Good Feeling.")

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood ran from 1968 until 2001 on public broadcasting stations.

Andy Hunsaker has a head full of sitcom gags and nerd-genre lore, and can be followed @AndyHunsaker if you're into that sort of thing.