Barney & Friends

Barney & Friends is an American children's television series aimed at children aged 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 ceased on September 18, 2009. Reruns aired on Sprout from 2005 until 2015, and returned in December 17, 2018 under Sprout's new name Universal Kids.

A revival had been announced in 2015 to premiere in 2017, but to date, this has not occurred.

Origin and development
Barney was created in 1987 by Sheryl Leach of Dallas, Texas. She came up with the idea 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 be developed for PBS. Rifkin thought Barney had appeal because he was not 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 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.

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 in the children's imaginations.

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 in Season 13, to other countries around the world.

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 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 waved goodbye before the credits roll.

Dinosaurs

 * Barney: The main character is a purple and green Tyrannosaurus in stuffed animal likeness, who comes to life through a child's imagination. His theme song is "Barney is a Dinosaur," whose tune is based on "Yankee Doodle". Barney often quotes things as being "Super dee-duper". Episodes frequently end with the song "I Love You", sung to the tune of "This Old Man", which happens to be one of Barney's favorite songs. Despite being a carnivorous type dinosaur, Barney likes many different foods such as fruits and vegetables, but his main favorite is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a glass of milk. He also loves marching bands and parades. He also has a slight northeastern accent.
 * Baby Bop: A green Triceratops, who was originally two years old, but turned three in "Look at Me, I'm 3!". Baby Bop has been on the show since her debut in "Barney in Concert" on July 29, 1991. She wears a pink bow and pink ballet slippers, and carries a yellow security blanket. She sings the song "My Yellow Blankey" to show how much her security blanket means to her. She likes to eat macaroni and cheese and pizza. She is the younger sister of B.J..
 * B.J.: A seven-year-old yellow Protoceratops, B.J. has been on the show since September 27, 1993. He is the older brother of Baby Bop, whom he frequently calls "Sissy" and occasionally calls by her name. He sings "B.J.'s Song" about himself. He wears a red baseball cap and red sneakers. He lost his hat in the episode "Hats Off to B.J.!", and sometimes says things to hide his fears (for example, in the episode "Barney's Halloween Party", he was shocked by the paper spiders and after learning they were fake, he said "I knew that, sort of"). Pickles are his favorite food and he has tried them in various ways, such as on pizza.
 * Riff: An orange six-year-old hadrosaur, who is Baby Bop and B.J.'s cousin, Riff has been on the show since September 6, 2006. He wears green sneakers. His theme music is "I Hear Music Everywhere". Riff loves music and it is in almost everything he does. In the episode "Barney: Let's Go to the Firehouse", it was revealed that Riff also likes to invent things; he created a four-sound smoke detector (the first three were different alarm sounds and the final one his own voice). He is shown to have an interest in marching bands and parades.

Adults and children
The adults and children on the show often appear as teachers, storytellers, or other characters.

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! (バーニーと英語であそぼう！ Bānī to Eigo de asobō!)" and on television as simply "Barney & Friends (バーニー&フレンズ Bānī 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: החברים של ברני‎ 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 shot in South Korea from 2001 to 2003, airing on KBS (under the name "바니와 친구들" (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 among those used by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay detention camp to coerce detainees. The use of the theme song to inflict psychological stress on Iraqi prisoners-of-war was examined by Jon Ronson in his 2004 book The Men Who Stare At Goats.

Criticism
Several people have concluded that episodes contain a great deal of age-appropriate educational material, including Yale University researchers Dorothy and Jerome Singer, who called the program a "model of what preschool television should be". Others have criticized the show for a lack of educational value, as well as being repetitive.

The show is often cited as a contributing factor to the perceived sense of "entitlement" seen in Generation Y, who grew up watching the show. 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.

In a 1993 newspaper article, Jerry Franklin, the head of Connecticut Public Television, which co-produced Barney at the time, was quoted thus: "When adults say they do not like Barney, Franklin says, 'in a way, we take that as a compliment. Barney is not designed for parents, whereas Sesame Street is designed for parents and children. We made a conscious decision to make Barney simple. It is not a program for parents. Barney relates to preschoolers. We think he speaks to them at their level, which is in simple terms and with music."