[Cicero]

I always liked Mr. Rogers myself, but my kids were taught to make fun of him by their friends. Mr. Rogers wasn't cool. So they stopped watching it at an early age.

Marshall McLuhan rightly said that with television, the medium is the message. Which is to say that it teaches everyone who watches too much of it to think in visually violent ten-second sound bites and quick, constant visual cuts. It decreases the attention span of children. That's pretty much regardless of what the program happens to be "about."

I liked Sesame Street, which ran in the same years as Mr. Rogers, but Sesame Street was, actually, visually violent. It catered to and cultivated a short attention span.

Mr. Rogers was the one exception to all the TV I've ever seen. Sweet, calm, kind, and never visually violent or jerky or full of montages and surprises. It bored a lot of people because the medium was basically slow and continuous, like life, and they preferred jerky 10-second sound bites, abrupt cuts in the video, and constant bursts of canned laughter.

[Amelia]

I liked Sesame Street, which ran in the same years as Mr. Rogers, but Sesame Street was, actually, visually violent. It catered to and cultivated a short attention span.

There is some research to suggest that letting children watch shows like that increases the incidence of ADHD, etc.

Small children seem to love Mr. Rogers, it's their parents (as this article shows) who are skeptical...