text:
Blue's Clues

Blue's Clues is an American live-action/animated interactive educational children's television series created by Traci Paige Johnson, Todd Kessler, and Angela C. Santomero. It premiered on Nickelodeon's Nick Jr. block on September 8, 1996, and concluded its run on August 6, 2006, with a total of six seasons and 143 episodes. The original host of the show was Steve Burns, who left in 2002 and was replaced by Donovan Patton (as "Joe") for the fifth and sixth seasons. The show follows an animated blue-spotted dog named Blue as she leaves a trail of clues/paw prints for the host and the viewers to figure out her plans for the day.

The producers and creators combined concepts from child development and early-childhood education with innovative animation and production techniques that helped their viewers learn, using research conducted thirty years since the debut of Sesame Street in the U.S. Unlike earlier preschool shows, Blue's Clues presented material in a narrative format instead of a magazine format, used repetition to reinforce its curriculum, structured every episode the same way, and revolutionized the genre by inviting their viewers' involvement.

Research was part of the creative and decision-making process in the production of the show, and was integrated into all aspects and stages of the creative process. Blue's Clues was the first cutout animation series for preschoolers in the United States and resembles a storybook in its use of primary colors and its simple construction paper shapes of familiar objects with varied colors and textures. Its home-based setting is familiar to American children, but has a look unlike previous children's TV shows.

Upon debuting, Blue's Clues became the highest-rated show for preschoolers on American commercial television, and was critical to Nickelodeon's growth. It has been syndicated in 120 countries and translated into 15 languages. Regional versions of the show featuring local hosts have been produced in other countries. By 2002, Blue's Clues had received several awards for excellence in children's programming, educational software and licensing, and had been nominated for nine Emmy Awards.

A live production of Blue's Clues, which used many of the production innovations developed by the show's creators, toured the U.S. starting in 1999. As of 2002, over two million people had attended over 1,000 performances. A spin-off called Blue's Room premiered in 2004. A revival of the series titled Blue's Clues & You!, hosted by Josh Dela Cruz premiered on Nickelodeon on November 11, 2019. The show's extensive use of research in its development and production process inspired several research studies that have provided evidence for its effectiveness as a learning tool.

Background
By 1990, parents, teachers and media experts had been criticizing "the lack of quality fare for children on commercial television" for many years. Up to that point, PBS was the only source for quality children's television; other broadcasters voluntarily set educational standards for their programming and "were expected to regulate themselves", but it led to little change in the quality of children's programs. By the time Blue's Clues premiered in 1996, there was a large number of TV shows for children, but most of them were violent and designed to sell action toys and other products; as co-creator Angela C. Santomero put it, "a vehicle for toy-based 'commercials'". According to author Diane Tracy in her 2002 book Blue's Clues for Success, "The state of children's television was pretty dismal".

There was little incentive for producing high-quality children's television until 1990, when Congress passed the Children's Television Act (CTA), which "required that networks be held accountable for the quality of children's programming or risk losing their license". The CTA set no hourly quotas and left it to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to determine compliance to the law, so little positive improvements were made. In 1996, the FCC passed additional regulations, including requiring broadcasters to, in a provision called "the Three-Hour rule", air at least three hours of children's programming per week, between the hours of 07:00 to 22:00, and that they be tagged with an E/I (Educational and Informational) logo so that children and their families could easily find the programs. The cable network Nickelodeon, which was recognized, along with PBS, as a leader in the creation and production of high-quality children's programming, was not required to comply with federal regulations to provide informative or educational content, but did so anyway, before the CTA became law.

According to Heather L. Kirkorian and her fellow researchers Ellen Wartella and Daniel Anderson in 2008, since television appeared in homes beginning in the mid-20th century, critics have often expressed concern about its impact on viewers, especially children, who as Kirkorian argued, are "active media users" by the age of three. Researchers believed that there were links between television viewing and children's cognitive and learning skills and that what children watched may be more important than how much they watched it. She reported that up until the 1980s, researchers had only an implicit theory about how viewers watched television, and that young children were cognitively passive viewers and controlled by "salient attention-eliciting features" like sound effects and fast movement. As a result, most researchers believed that television interfered with cognition and reflection and as a result, children could not learn from and process television. In the early 1980s, however, new theories about how young children watch television suggested that attention in children as young as two-years old were largely guided by program content.

Conception
In the mid-1990s, Nickelodeon, looking to create programming for preschoolers, hired a team of three producers, Angela C. Santomero, Todd Kessler, and Traci Paige Johnson, to create a new television program for young children. According to The New York Times, Kessler was the first creator to be brought on board to the project. Kessler, a freelance Nickelodeon producer at the time, had previously worked on Sesame Street, but he disliked its format and thought that it was too static and not visual enough. Santomero, who named Fred Rogers as a major influence, worked at Nickelodeon as a researcher and Johnson was a freelance artist and animator. Santomero later said that they "were young, and Nickelodeon took a chance on us".

Daniel R. Anderson of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who author Malcolm Gladwell called one of the "pioneering television researchers", was an adviser for the new show. Nickelodeon had hired Anderson as an adviser for its Nick Jr. block of preschool programs starting in 1993, although Santomero had already been getting his input about research informally. When Nickelodeon enlisted her to co-create Blue's Clues, he came on in a more formal capacity. Anderson later said that he "jumped at the chance" to serve as an advisor for Blue's Clues because "Nickelodeon was interested in providing programs that would actually benefit preschoolers rather than merely entertain them". Anderson also stated that the choice to produce the show as overtly and clearly educational was a departure for Nickelodeon and for any commercial network. According to research conducted by Nickelodeon, parents of preschool aged children wanted the shows they watched to be educational.

Santomero, Kessler, and Johnson met in a conference room at Viacom, which owned Nickelodeon, in New York for a month to create Blue's Clues. According to Santomero, the creators of Blue's Clues wanted to create a children's television show that was "something very simple and graphic and slow", emphasized social and emotional skills, treated children like they were smart, and helped them feel empowered. The character Blue was originally conceived as a cat, and the name of the show was to be Blue Prints, but the show's name was changed and Blue became a dog because Nickelodeon was already producing a show about a cat and because, as Anderson reported, children who watched the pilot, which was used for testing, "almost universally called the show Blue's Clues". Even though most children's television shows at the time were built around male characters, Blue was female and as The New York Times put it, "never wore a bow".

Kessler handled the show's "computer-based production", Santomero the research, and Johnson the design. By 2001, the show's research team, which worked collaboratively with the show's producers and creators, consisted of director of research Alice Wilder, who joined the Blue's Clues team shortly after the show's debut, Alison Sherman, Karen Leavitt, and Koshi Dhingra. They were given $150,000 to produce a pilot, about a quarter of the budget for other Nickelodeon shows at the time, which was used in 1995 to test the show's interactive elements with its potential audience. The pilot was considered lost, but in 2021, Santomero announced that she owned a copy of it, and that the pilot was filmed in 1994. In September 2023, the full pilot unexpectedly surfaced online, putting an end to the nearly two-decade long search for it.

Premiere and later history
Blue's Clues premiered in the U.S. on September 8, 1996. The premiere was the highest-rated premiere of any Nickelodeon program, and the show became crucial to the network's growth. Scholar Norma Pecora called Blue's Clues the "cornerstone" of Nickelodeon's educational programming. By the end of 1997, it was the highest-rated show for preschoolers on commercial television, and was the third-highest rated show behind children's public television shows; Barney & Friends and Arthur. Within 18 months of its premiere, Blue's Clues was as well known among the parents of preschoolers as more established children's shows such as Sesame Street and Barney & Friends. In 2002, Tracy reported that it was one of the highest-rated shows for preschoolers, was preschool children and their parents' favorite cable preschool program, was viewed by approximately 13.7 million viewers each week, and aired in about 60 countries.

In 2000, after 75 episodes, with "no fanfare" and no announcement from Nickelodeon, co-creator and co-producer Todd Kessler left Blue's Clues and the network to pursue other projects. He told The New York Times that he had "no hard feelings" regarding his departure. Kessler continued to be listed as an executive producer for the run of the show and for any future spin-offs. Also in 2000, CBS, which was also owned by Viacom, began airing the show as part of the centerpiece of its Saturday and Sunday morning children's programming. In 2004, Blue's Clues stopped production, which Santomero called "devastating", although it continued to air on Nickelodeon, and a spin-off, Blue's Room, was launched in the same year. It featured puppets, as well as the original show's second host. Blue's Clues celebrated its 10-year anniversary in 2006 with a prime time special and the release of a DVD entitled "Blue's Biggest Stories", which consisted of eight half-hour episodes spanning the show's history.

In November 2019, a reboot of Blue's Clues premiered. The show, called Blue's Clues & You!, is hosted by Josh Dela Cruz and features many of the same characters in the original show. Steve Burns, the original show's first host, serves as a writer and director on the new show; he has also made guest appearances, along with the original show's second host Donovan Patton, and participated in the casting of Dela Cruz.

Casting

The most important casting decision was that of the host, the only human character in the show. The host's role was to empower and challenge the show's young viewers, to help increase their self-esteem, and to strongly connect with them through the television screen. The producers originally wanted a female host. After months of research and over 1,000 auditions, they hired actor/performer Steve Burns based on the strength of his audition. Burns received the strongest and most enthusiastic response in tests with the young audience. Johnson said what made Burns a great children's TV host was that "he didn't want to be a children's host ... He loved kids, but he didn't want to make a career out of it". Burns decided to leave the show in the autumn of 2000, departing in January 2001. He was in over 100 episodes of Blue's Clues when his final episodes aired in April 2002. Burns himself stated, "I knew I wasn't gonna be doing children's television all my life, mostly because I refused to lose my hair on a kid's TV show, and it was happenin' – fast."

After the producers conducted 1,500 auditions, Burns was replaced by actor Donovan Patton, who played Steve's brother Joe, introduced to the audience in articles in Nickelodeon's magazine and on its webpage and an arc of three episodes. Burns' departure generated "outlandish rumors" and was featured in a Time magazine story. Patton had never seen Blue's Clues before he auditioned for the part, and like Burns, who worked with him to help him prepare for the role, was also popular with preschool test audiences. The producers later reported that finding someone who could match Burns' "deceptively simple performance" was difficult. Patton became a "household name", although as Johnson stated, his character was named Joe because "Donovan was a little too hard on a preschooler's tongue". According to The New York Times, Patton played the role more relaxed and "taller" than Burns.

Even though research demonstrated that children tend to pay less attention to adult male voices, Burns and Patton were chosen as the program's hosts because they were popular with their audience. Daniel Anderson insisted that Burns and Patton were the best actors for their roles out of the hundreds who auditioned, calling them "actors who could mime as demanded by the mixed action and animation format", and reported that there was no evidence that children paid less attention to them than to other parts of the program. He also said that Burns and Patton overcame what he called "attentional bias against men" in three ways: by behaving energetically and childlike; by breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to the audience, often by looking directly into the camera and asking their audience, "Will you help?", and like Fred Rogers, forming a direct relationship to the audience; and by "always doing something". Anderson insisted that by forming a relationship with the audience, the actors' male voice became cues to the audience to pay attention and stated that it was the hosts' style of presentation that determined child attention.

Johnson was cast as Blue's voice because, of the show's crew, she was able to sound the most like a dog. Nick Balaban, who wrote the music for the show along with Michael Rubin, was cast as the voice of Mr. Salt. Balaban initially used a Brooklyn accent for Mr. Salt before settling on a French accent. Rubin also provided the voice of Mailbox.

Format
In The Tipping Point, author Malcolm Gladwell, who called Blues Clues the "'stickiest'—meaning the most irresistible and involving—television show ever", described its format:

Steve, the host, presents the audience with a puzzle involving Blue, the animated dog ... To help the audience unlock the puzzle, Blue leaves behind a series of clues, which are objects marked with one of her paw prints. In between the discovery of the clues, Steve plays a series of games—mini-puzzles—with the audience that are thematically related to the overall puzzle ... As the show unfolds, Steve and Blue move from one animated set to another, jumping through magical doorways, leading viewers on a journey of discovery, until, at the end of the story, Steve returns to the living room. There, at the climax of the show, he sits down in a comfortable chair to think—a chair known, of course, in the literal world of Blue's Clues, as the Thinking Chair. He puzzles over Blue's three clues and attempts to come up with the answer.

Nickelodeon researcher Daniel R. Anderson called the structure of Blue's Clues a game that presented its viewers with increasingly challenging and developmentally appropriate problems to solve. Early episodes focused on basic subjects such as colors and numbers, but later the programs focused on math, physics, anatomy, and astronomy. The show's producers believed that comprehension and attention were strongly connected, so they wrote the episodes to encourage and increase their viewers' attention. They used content and production characteristics such as pacing which gave children time to respond, as well as "camera techniques, children's voices, musical cues, sound effects, clear transitions, repeatable dialogue, and visuals". Participation, in the form of spoken or physical response from the audience, and the mastery of thinking skills were encouraged by the use of repetition, both within the structure of individual episodes and across multiple episodes. The producers used a variety of formal features, which were auditory, and content features, which consisted of invitations given to the audience. The features were also in the form of both recurrent and unique formats and content. The purpose of the recurrent formats and content, which were similar in every episode, was to increase viewers' attention, comprehension, and participation during key educational lessons.

Nickelodeon originally aired the same episode daily for five days before showing the next one. The producers believed this telecast strategy empowered young children by giving them many opportunities to master the content and problems presented to them. Scholar Norma Pecora considered the broadcast strategy of airing the same episode for five consecutive days in a week "sound educational thinking", because children tend to watch the same episodes multiple times and learn from repetition, and "economically clever" because the network could air 2.5 hours with one episode over five days.

Educational goals
The creators and producers' mission of Blue's Clues was to "empower, challenge, and build the self-esteem of preschoolers ... while making them laugh". According to Anderson and his colleagues, the show's curriculum was based on "inherent respect for preschoolers and their ability to think and learn while having fun". Anderson and his colleagues stated that Blue's Clues was created with the question: What does television teach young children? Kessler, Santomero, and Johnson were influenced by Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and by Sesame Street, the first children's television program to create a detailed and comprehensive educational curriculum developed from research and use developmental theory, child development, learning theory, and research. According to Anderson, it was essential that the writers and creators of Blue's Clues have background and experience in early childhood development theory and research in order to ensure that the audience understood the dialogue, game, and recurrent program elements in each episode.

Like Sesame Street, formative research was an important part of the development of each episode of Blue's Clues, which was included in the show's production budgets. "We wanted to learn from Sesame Street and take it one step further", Santomero said. The producers and creators used formative research, which the producers called their "secret sauce", during all aspects of the program's creative and decision-making process, and Nickelodeon provided the funding to support it. In addition to a curriculum that emphasized reasoning skills relevant to preschoolers' everyday lives, the producers wanted to include audience participation, called by Variety its "call and response style", that encouraged problem solving, mastery of the information presented, positive reinforcement, and prosocial messages. They believed that a strong sense of self-esteem, which they sought to develop in their viewers, was linked to independent thinking and thinking skills. Anderson stated, "Age-appropriate pacing and explicit directions give children an opportunity to have a voice". Anderson and his colleagues compared audience participation on the program with hands-on practice provided by a caregiver. The show's producers believed, despite the viewpoints of past researchers, that children were intellectually active while watching television.

Sesame Street tested a third of its episodes, but the Blue's Clues research team field tested every episode three times with children aged between two and six in a variety of preschool environments such as Head Start programs, public schools, and private day care centers, in order to ascertain their abilities, interests, and knowledge, to ensure the mission and philosophy of the program, and to ensure balanced demographic groups. There were three phases of testing: content evaluation, video evaluations, and content analysis. In their tests of the pilot, conducted throughout the New York City area with over 100 children aged from three to seven, they found that as the pilot progressed, children's attention was captured and sustained, and they became excited and actively participated, standing to get closer to the television and speaking to the host. The producers and researchers also consulted outside advisers, who were chosen based on their expertise and the needs of each script. As Anderson stated, the formative research team served "as a liaison between the feedback provided by the preschoolers and outside advisers and the production team, including writers, talent, producers, directors, element artists, and animators".

Blue's Clues was designed and produced on the assumption that since children are cognitively active when they watch television, a television program could be an effective method of scientific education for young children by telling stories through pictures and by modeling behavior and learning. These learning opportunities included the use of mnemonics in the form of mantras and songs, and what Tracy called "metacognitive wrap-up" at the end of each episode, in which the lessons were summarized and rehearsed. The producers wanted to foster their audience's sense of empowerment by eliciting their assistance for the show's host and by encouraging their identification with the character Blue, who served as a stand-in for the typical preschooler.

The thinking games presented in each episode used what Anderson called "a layered approach" that took the varying capabilities of the audience into account. Santomero said that they used scaffolding and that layering was inherent in the script and design of each game. They purposely presented the problem presented in increasing levels of difficulty, to prevent children from feeling frustrated and to master concepts, experience success, and feel empowered to attempt to solve more challenging concepts presented to them. The producers' goal was that all viewers understood the problem, even if they did not know how to solve it. As a result, the child was temporary frustrated by not knowing the answer because after giving them time to come up with it, child voice-overs provided the answers for them, so that they learned the correct answers, even if they were unable to come up with them. If the child was able to come up with the answers, however, they felt "part of a larger, knowing, child audience" when their answers were confirmed by the voice-overs. The child voice-overs also helped viewers maintain high levels of attention during critical educational portions of the episode and modelled the audience involvement encouraged by the program. The audience was told how they could help problem-solve by the host explaining how, by the child voice-overs modeling verbal participation, and by giving them enough time to respond. According to Johnson, the slow pace of the program was challenging for television directors used to the fast pace of television production and for parents, who praised the pace but expressed concerns that their children would find it boring.

Sesame Street reflected the prevailing view that preschoolers had short attention spans; it featured a magazine-like format consisting of varied segments. Based on research conducted over the 30 years since the launch of Sesame Street by theorists like Anderson, the producers of Blue's Clues wanted to develop a show that took advantage of children's intellectual and behavioral activity when watching television. Previous children's television programs presented their content with little input from their viewers, but Blue's Clues was one of the first children's shows to actively invite its viewers' involvement. Its creators believed that if children were more involved in what they were viewing, they would attend to its content longer than previously expected—for up to a half hour—and learn more. They also dropped the magazine format for a more traditional narrative format. As Variety magazine stated, "The choice for Blue's Clues became to tell one story, beginning to end, camera moving left-to-right like reading a storybook, transitions from scene to scene as obvious as the turning of a page". Every episode of Blue's Clues was structured in this way.

The pace of Blue's Clues was deliberate, and its material was presented clearly. Similar to Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, this was done was in the use of pauses that were "long enough to give the youngest time to think, short enough for the oldest not to get bored". The length of the pauses, which was estimated from formative research, gave children enough time to process the information and solve the problem. After pausing, child voice-overs provided the answers so that they were given to children who had not come up with the solution and helped encourage viewer participation. Researcher Alisha M. Crawley and her colleagues stated that although earlier programs sometimes invited overt audience participation, Blue's Clues was "unique in making overt involvement a systematic research-based design element". Blue's Clues also differed from Sesame Street by not using cultural references or humor aimed at adults, as this could confuse preschoolers but, instead, made the show literal, which the producers felt would better hold the children's attention. The structure of each episode was repetitive, designed to provide preschoolers with comfort and predictability. Repetition of the same skills used in different contexts or games within and across episodes encouraged the mastery of thinking skills and the approach to content within an episode was consistent with learning theory that emphasized situated cognition and provided all viewers, no matter their age or abilities, with repeated opportunities to try to solve the problems presented.

Since preschoolers tend to have difficulty understanding transitions, especially when they involve active inferences about time, space, and characters' perspective, the program's producers minimized transitions that required inference so that their viewers' intellectual resources could be devoted to understanding the episode's content. They accomplished this goal by limiting the number of settings during an episode and with the transitions occurring only between them and signaled by dialogue and enough time and information necessary to process them. The primary settings in Blue's Clues were the host's house and backyard, and transitions between them were usually done continuously, without the use of cuts. If transitions were accompanied by cuts, it was done by the host moving to and through a door and continuing as he entered the front or backyard. The biggest transition in Blue's Clues occurred when the host "skidooed" and jumped into a picture or book, done in a magical way with plenty of warning that it was coming, and began and ended in the new environment. Anderson reported that children clearly understood and enjoyed the skidoo transition. Santomero reported that the skidoo transition was inspired by the use of the trolley in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, which also served as a transition device.

Production
The producers and writers of Blue's Clues used content and television production techniques such as camera techniques, the use of children's voices, musical cues, sound effects, repeatable dialogue, and visuals in order to encourage and increase comprehension and attention. Blue's Clues was set in the home—the environment that was most familiar and secure for preschoolers—and looked like no other children's television show. The theme and topic of each episode, which was in development, from idea development to final production, for approximately one year, was chosen by the research team. Writers created a goal sheet, which identified their objectives based on the show's curriculum and audience needs. According to show researcher Koshi Dhingra and her colleagues, the integration of writing and researching Blue's Clues was unique and involved "an extremely collaborative process". Script drafts, once developed and approved by the show's creators and research team, were tested at public and private schools, day care centers, preschools, and Head Start programs by three researchers, who would narrate the story in the form of a storybook and take notes about the children's responses. The writers and creators revised the scripts based on this feedback. A rough video, in which the host performed from the revised script in front of a blue screen with no animation, was filmed and retested. The script was revised based on the audiences' responses, tested a third time with animation and music added, and incorporated into future productions.

According to Dhingra and her colleagues, the researchers represented the preschool viewer. After coming up with an idea for an episode, the writers met with Alice Wilder, head of the research department for Blue's Clues, to discuss their idea. The research department and writers then discussed if the topic and approach to the topic was appropriate for preschoolers, and if they accepted it, the content of the episode was further developed. They would often bring in outside consultants who were experts in the subject matter and the processes in teaching it to preschoolers. Wilder considered the researchers experts in how the concepts they wanted to present would translate to the medium of television rather than in a classroom or museum, but they considered preschoolers, who evaluated each script from their perspective, to be their " true experts". The writer took the information they gathered from the research department, preschoolers, and experts and wrote a treatment, or detailed outline of the script, which included goals for the entire episode and for each game. The writers, Wilder, and the research team had a treatment meeting, which Dhingra and her colleagues described as "an organized creative brainstorm", which was rooted in the philosophy and mission of the show, the art of good storytelling, and the point of view of their viewers. The goal of the treatment meeting was to give the writers everything they needed to create a workable second draft of the episode script, and to ensure that it fit the needs of their viewers.

The researchers brought in experts, if needed, and then, at the second draft stage, interviewed preschoolers. Preschooler testing was conducted in three rounds: the concept test, and video test, and content analysis. The producers and creators of the show, during their interviews of preschoolers, created a rough version of the episode, with the host and preliminary animations and backgrounds, and showed it to preschoolers to gain further feedback and was designed to assess their reactions to the content and visuals. According to Dhingra and her colleagues, the greatest strengths of the development of all episodes of Blue's Clues were the high levels of collaboration between all departments involved in the creation of the show, the clearly-defined strategies they used to effectively include their preschool viewers in the development process, and their use of the mission, philosophy, and structure of the program to create and develop each episode.

Most of the show's production was done in-house, rather than by outside companies as was customary for children's TV shows at the time. Blue's Clues was filmed in a studio in Tribeca, Manhattan, New York. The show's creators understood that the look and visual design of the show would be integral to children's attachment with it. Johnson expanded on the "cut-out" style she had created during her college years. Blue's Clues was the first animated series for preschoolers that utilized simple cut-out construction paper shapes of familiar objects with a wide variety of colors and textures, resembling a storybook. Johnson also used primary colors and organized each room of the home setting into groups. The green-striped shirt worn by the show's original host, Steve, was inspired by Fruit Stripe gum. The goals were to make the show look natural and simplistic; as Tracy put it, "freshly cut and glued together with a vivid array of textures, colors, and shadows" similar to picture book illustrations. The program's design was influenced by an understanding of the cognitive, emotional, and social capabilities of preschoolers. For example, the purpose of the notebook in Blue's Clues, which was used to record the clues presented throughout an episode, was to teach preschoolers how to overcome their poorly developed memory skills by using external mnemonic aids and lists. The music, produced by composer Michael Rubin and pianist Nick Balaban, was simple, had a natural sound, and exposed children to a wide variety of genres and instruments. Rubin and Balaban used Anderson's research about the importance of using auditory cues to increase children's attention and inserted auditory signatures to encourage the audience to pay attention to the episodes "at critical junctures for learning". According to Tracy, the music empowered children and gave the show "a sense of playfulness, a sense of joy, and a sense of the fantastic". Rubin and Balaban encouraged the musicians who performed for the show to improvise.

The host performed each episode in front of a "blue screen", with animation added later. The show's digital design department combined high-tech and low-tech methods by creating and photographing three-dimensional objects, then cutting them out and placing them into the background, which made the objects look more real and added perspective and depth. Johnson hired artist Dave Palmer and production company Big Pink to create the animation, which was at that time a new technology, from simple materials like fabric, paper, or pipe-cleaners, and scan them into a Macintosh computer so that they could be animated using inexpensive computer software such as Media 100, Ultimatte, Photoshop and After Effects. instead of being repeatedly redrawn as in traditional animation. Johnson credited Kessler with the idea of using the Macintosh. The result was something that looked different from anything else on television at the time, and the producers were able to animate two episodes in eight weeks, as compared to the sixteen weeks necessary to create a single episode by traditional methods. Their process looked like traditional cut-out animation, but was faster, more flexible, and less expensive, and it allowed them to make changes based on feedback from test audiences. Unlike traditional animation environments, which tended to be highly structured, the animators were given information about the characters and goals of the scenes they would animate, and then given the freedom to work out the timing and look of each scene themselves, as long as their creations were true to the characters and to the story. By 1999, the show's animation department consisted of Palmer, twenty animators, eleven digital designers, and five art directors and model makers. By 2002, Nickelodeon had built a "state-of-the-art" $6 million digital animation studio that housed 140 people, including 70 animators.

Reception
Ratings for Blue's Clues were high during its first season, and it was Nickelodeon's most popular preschool program. It has been described as the first commercial television show for preschoolers that was both educational and profitable. Its creators met regularly with businesses that developed Blue's Clues merchandise and products to ensure toys that were educational and met "the same high ... standards as the show". Products, like the show, were heavily tested prior to marketing. Blue's Clues had sold almost 40 million units of its 45 VHS and DVD titles by 1998 and generated over $1 billion in product licensing in 2000. More than ten million Blue's Clues books were in print by 2001 and over three million copies of six CD-ROM titles based on the show had been sold. Seven Blue's Clues titles sold at least 1 million copies each. The show's first direct-to-video production was Blue's Big Musical Movie (2000), featuring Ray Charles and The Persuasions; it received mostly positive reviews and has sold over 3 million copies since 2006. The launch of Blue's Clues products at FAO Schwarz's flagship store in New York City was the most successful product launch in the store's history and was attended by over 7,000 people. Steve Burns' final episode in 2002 was viewed by 1.9 million preschoolers and received a 47 percent share of the overall audience. By 2002, Blue's Clues had received several awards for children's programming, educational software, and licensing. It won eight consecutive Emmys between 1998 and 2005 and won a Peabody Award in 2001.

Starting in 1999, a live production of Blue's Clues toured the U.S. to positive reviews. As of 2002, over 2 million people had attended over 1,000 performances. The creators of the TV show were involved in all aspects of the live show, aiming to translate the bond between the TV show's audience and its cast to the stage. The creators chose Jonathan Hochwald as the live show's producer, Gip Hoppe as its director, and Dave Gallo as its set designer. Neither Hoppe nor Gallo had any previous experience in children's theater. Nick Balaban and Michael Rubin, who wrote the music for the TV show, composed the live show's soundtrack. The producers were concerned with children's response to the host, who was played by Tom Mizer (a different actor than the host of the TV show), but his young audience enthusiastically accepted and embraced him. Actors were encouraged to improvise and respond to the audience, which resulted in changes throughout the show's run. The show's script included humor that both children and their parents could enjoy.

Regional versions of the show, featuring native hosts, have been produced in other countries. Kevin Duala hosted the United Kingdom version and the show became part of pop culture in South Korea. In total, Blue's Clues was syndicated in 120 countries, and was translated into 15 languages. In 2000, it became one of the first preschool shows to incorporate American Sign Language into its content, with between five and ten signs used consistently in each episode. Blue's Clues won an award from the Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness (GLAD) for promoting deaf awareness in the media.

Cultural influence and impact
The extensive use of research in the development and production process of Blue's Clues inspired several studies that provided evidence for its effectiveness as a learning tool. As Anderson and his colleagues reported, Blue's Clues had "a beneficial cognitive and social impact" the longer younger children watched it, which increased steadily over time, and that its benefits to cognitive development are both durable and cumulative. They also believed that the research conducted on the program demonstrated that when children's television programs were based on information gained from child development concepts, had a systematic curriculum, and were designed with "a research-based understanding of how children use and understand television, it can be a powerful and positive influence". As they stated, "it appears that the program is not only doing well, but it is also doing good”. In 2004, Anderson said that Blue's Clues "raised the bar" for educational television; he and Variety reported that audience participation became an important part of other educational preschool TV programs such as Dora the Explorer and Sesame Street. Anderson also reported that after Blue's Clues, all of Nickelodeon's educational programming included the use of formative research.

In 2019, shortly after the premiere of Blue's Clues & You, the New York Times called Blue's Clues "something of a throwback: a leisurely paced, unflashy show with the educational bona fides of its public TV predecessors Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street". It also stated that Blue's Clues paved the way for shows like Dora the Explorer. The program was the first children's cable show built entirely around direct address, the first to invite preschoolers to play along with the characters with games and "mini-mysteries", and the first to include built-in silences designed for child participation. As The New York Times stated, "The show was interactive before interactivity became mundane".

Based on anecdotal evidence that preschoolers enjoyed repeated viewings of the programs they watched on television, including Anderson's own experience with his four-year-old daughter, who asked to watch a tape of the pilot of Blue's Clues 17 times, the producers decided to repeat each episode daily for a week. Despite no published evidence that repeated viewings resulted in increased comprehension, especially for younger viewers, and would reinforce the problem-solving skills taught in each episode, and because they did not have enough money to produce a full season of episodes, Nickelodeon agreed to their broadcast strategy, and they were the first network to experiment with the approach. In the summer of 1996, before the premiere of Blue's Clues, Santomero, Anderson, and Wilder conducted a study, funded by Nickelodeon, about the effect of repeated viewings of the pilot episode on its viewers and their ability to learn the curriculum content contained in the episode.

Anderson reported that the results of the study were "clear, striking, and to us, very interesting". They found that except for the five-year-old boys they tested, audience participation greatly increased with repetition, especially for the problem-solving portions of an episode, as did their comprehension and problem solving. Anderson stated, "As children learned how to solve the problems they would shout out the answers, talk to Steve, point to the screen, jump up with excitement, and so on". After five viewings, children had also become skilled at solving similar problems that had not been presented in the episode. Anderson reported that the repetition broadcast strategy worked during the program's first year. Nickelodeon used the same strategy for its premiere of Dora the Explorer in 2000, and Nielsen ratings for both programs indicated no change in audience size during the time the repetitions aired. The study also demonstrated that watching Blue's Clues changed how children watch television and that their problem-solving skills and interaction would transfer to other programs they watched.

In 1999, Anderson and a team of researchers, some of which were his colleagues at Nickelodeon, studied how episode repetition affected comprehension, audience participation, and visual attention. The researchers tested whether repeated viewings of the show resulted in mastery over the material presented, or whether viewers would habituate to what they watched or become bored. The study demonstrated that for the first few repetitions, children pay close attention to the educational content because it was more cognitively demanding. The researchers concluded that audience participation was lower because children were devoting more of their cognitive resources to understanding and solving the problem presented in the episode. When they mastered the problems, which the researchers suspected happened the third time the children viewed the episode, they paid the same amount of attention to the educational content as to the entertainment content, which was less demanding. Audience participation, however, increased because their cognitive resources were freed up and because they knew the answers to the questions asked by the host and other characters. Anderson and his colleagues believed that their study proved that episode repetition appeared to foster their viewers' empowerment, as demonstrated in the viewers' enthusiastic efforts to help solve problems the host and other characters posed.

The study also demonstrated that experienced viewers (those familiar with the program) looked less at the screen than inexperienced viewers. All children looked at educational content more than at entertainment content. Experienced viewers looked at content unique to the program, but inexperienced viewers did not distinguish between the two types of content, since for them, all content was new. Experienced viewers interacted with the program more and showed better comprehension of the content than inexperienced viewers, especially when they were exposed to content that was repeated across episodes. As Anderson and his colleagues put it, "These results further support the notion that when content is new and challenging, preschoolers pay greater attention, but when it is in a recurrent format and therefore readily mastered, they interact more". In other words, "Interaction in Blue's Clues to some extent thus reflects mastery". Nielsen ratings of the show's first season, when the same episode was shown daily, were flat over the five-day period, which indicated to Anderson that young children did not tire of its repetition or of its complexity over time. According to Crawley and her colleagues, the producers' repeat broadcast strategy had no negative effectives of the program's ratings and appeared to be a success.

In 2000, another team of researchers, including Anderson, Crawley, and other Nickelodeon colleagues, studied if watching Blue's Clues changed the way children watch television and if they learned "an interactive style of television viewing”, meaning that they were more interactive with an episode from a different series than viewers who did not have experience watching Blue’s Clues. They compared experienced and unexperienced viewers as they watched an episode of Big Bag, a “curriculum-based magazine format” series that aired on Cartoon Network, directed towards approximately the same audience as Blue’s Clues. They found that although experienced Blue's Clues viewers paid less overall attention to Big Bag than inexperienced viewers, their patterns of attention across Big Bag were identical to their attention to an episode of Blue's Clues. They also demonstrated that viewers had the same amount of comprehension in both programs, but Blue's Clues viewers interacted more with Big Bag than inexperienced viewers. When the content of Big Bag was new and challenging, Blue's Clues viewers paid more attention, and when it was familiar, either from previous viewings or in a format they recognized, they interacted with it more. In short, Anderson and his colleagues found that "interaction in Blue's Clues to some extent reflects mastery" and felt that their study demonstrated that watching Blue's Clues changed how young children watch television. Researcher Shalom M. Fisch, however, stated that although the show attempted to be "participatory", it could not truly be so, because unlike interactive computer games, the viewers' responses could not change or influence what occurred on-screen.

In 2002, Crawley, Anderson, and their colleagues conducted another study on the effects of Blue's Clues, this time researching whether more experienced viewers mastered the content and cognitive challenges faster and easier than first-time viewers. They surmised that experienced viewers would comprehend and interact more with the recurring and familiar segments of the show designed to aid comprehension, but they found that familiarity with the structure of an individual episode did not provide experienced viewers with an advantage over the inexperienced viewers. Crawley and Anderson also studied whether experienced viewers of Blue's Clues interacted more with other children's TV shows and whether the viewing behaviors they learned from Blue's Clues could be transferred to other shows. They found that although experienced viewers of Blue's Clues interacted with an episode of another series, they did not spend more time watching it than viewers unfamiliar with the show. The researchers stated, "It is apparent that, although preschoolers learn to enthusiastically engage in overt audience participation, they do not, by and large, have a metacognitive understanding of why they do so."

The 2002 studies demonstrated that experience with watching one TV series affects how children watch other programs, especially in the way they interact with them. They also showed that since children are selective in the material they attend to and that their interaction increases with comprehension and mastery, children tend to pay more attention to novel information and interact more with material they have seen before and mastered. According to Crawley and her colleagues, Blue's Clues demonstrated that television could empower and influence children's long-term motivation for and a love of learning. As they stated, "One need only to watch children watch Blue’s Clues to realize that they respond to it with enormous enthusiasm".

Erin Ryan and her colleagues performed a 2009 study on the effect of the use of American Sign Language (ASL) in Blue's Clues episodes. They analyzed 16 episodes over two weeks for the content and frequency of the signs used and found a high incidence of ASL use by various characters, but that it was inconsistent, especially in the connection between English words and their corresponding signs. The purpose of signed communication and its connection with ASL and the Deaf community was also not clearly explained. The researchers speculated that hearing children with no previous ASL exposure would become familiar with ASL and with deaf people by these episodes, thus reducing the stigma attached to deafness and hard of hearing individuals. Based on other research about the positive effects of teaching ASL to hearing children, the researchers also speculated that it could lead to an increase of vocabulary skills and IQ, as well as improve interpersonal communication. They surmised that deaf children would feel more included and less isolated and have more opportunities to view positive models of ASL and deaf people.

Georgene L. Troseth and her colleagues at Vanderbilt University studied how toddlers used information gained from prerecorded video and from interactions with a person through closed-circuit video, and found that two-year-old children did not learn as much from prerecorded videos because the videos lacked social cues and personal references. Two-year-olds who viewed a video with instructions about how to find a toy in an adjoining room from a non-interactive researcher did not use the information, even though they smiled and responded to questions. Troseth speculated that their research had implications for interactive educational shows like Blue's Clues, which although was "on the right track" because the host invited interaction with the show's viewers, did not provide children with the social cues to solve real-world problems. Troseth stated that repetition, repeated exposure, and familiarity with the show's host may increase children's ability to learn facts and to use strategies they learn from Blue's Clues to solve new problems. Her research suggested that Blue's Clues engaged young children and elicited their active participation because they mimicked social interaction.

2019 revival
On March 6, 2018, Nickelodeon announced a revival of the series, with a new host and 20 new episodes. An open casting call for the show's new host occurred in April, and production began in the summer of 2018. On September 13, 2018, it was announced that the show would be titled Blue's Clues & You!, and Josh Dela Cruz would be the host of the revival. The show premiered on November 11, 2019.

title: Blue's Clues


text:
STS-71

As the third mission of the US/Russian Shuttle-Mir Program, STS-71 became the first Space Shuttle to dock with the Russian space station Mir. STS-71 began on June 27, 1995, with the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis from launchpad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Shuttle delivered a relief crew of two cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyev and Nikolai Budarin to the station and recovered Increment astronaut Norman Thagard. Atlantis returned to Earth on July 7 with a crew of eight. It was the first of seven straight missions to Mir flown by Atlantis, and the second Shuttle mission to land with an eight-person crew after STS-61-A in 1985.

For the five days the Shuttle was docked to Mir they were the largest spacecraft in orbit at the time. STS-71 marked the first docking of a Space Shuttle to a space station, the first time a Shuttle crew switched members with the crew of a station, and the 100th crewed space launch by the United States. The mission carried Spacelab and included a logistical resupply of Mir. Together the Shuttle and station crews conducted various on-orbit joint US/Russian life science investigations with Spacelab along with the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment-II (SAREX-II) experiment.

Mission highlights
The primary objectives of this flight were to rendezvous and perform the first docking between the Space Shuttle and the Russian Space Station Mir on June 29. In the first U.S.-Russian (Soviet) docking in twenty years, Atlantis delivered a relief crew of two cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyev and Nikolai Budarin to Mir.

Other prime objectives were on-orbit joint United States of America-Russian life sciences investigations aboard SPACELAB/Mir, logistical resupply of the Mir and recovery of US astronaut Norman E. Thagard.

Secondary objectives included filming with the IMAX camera and the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment-II (SAREX-II) experiment.

STS-71 was the 100th U.S. human space launch conducted from Cape Canaveral, the first U.S. Space Shuttle-Russian Space Station docking and joint on-orbit operations; largest spacecraft ever in orbit; and the first on-orbit changeout of Shuttle crew.

The rendezvous sequence began at 15:32:19 EDT with a lift-off in-plane with Mir's orbit, at the opening of the 10 minute 19 second launch window. Ascent was nominal with no OMS 1 burn required. The OMS 2 burn, initiated at 42 minutes 58 seconds Mission Elapsed Time, adjusted the orbit to 160 x 85.3 nautical miles. It was the lowest ever perigee altitude flown by an orbiter. This facilitated a very rapid initial catch up rate with Mir of about 880 nautical miles per orbit. Almost three hours later the orbit was raised to more typical values of 210 x 159 nautical miles by the OMS 3 burn.

Docking occurred at 9 am EDT, June 29, using R-Bar or Earth radius vector approach, with Atlantis closing in on Mir from directly below. R-bar approach allows natural forces to brake the orbiter's approach more than would occur along standard approach directly in front of the space station; also, an R-bar approach minimizes the number of orbiter jet firings needed for approach. The manual phase of the docking began with Atlantis about a half-mile (800 m) below Mir, with Gibson at the controls on aft flight deck. Stationkeeping was performed when the orbiter was about 75 m from Mir, pending approval from Russian and U.S. flight directors to proceed. Gibson then maneuvered the orbiter to a point about 10 m from Mir before beginning the final approach to station. Closing rate was close to the targeted 0.1 foot per second (30 mm/s), being approximately 0.107 foot per second (33 mm/s) at contact. Interface contact was nearly flawless: less than 25 mm lateral misalignment and an angular misalignment of less than 0.5 degrees per axis. No braking jet firings had been required. Docking occurred about 216 nautical miles (400 km) above Lake Baikal region of the Russian Federation. The Orbiter Docking System (ODS) with Androgynous Peripheral Docking System served as the actual connection point to a similar interface on the docking port on Mir's Kristall module. ODS, located in the forward payload bay of Atlantis, performed flawlessly during the docking sequence.

When linked, Atlantis and Mir formed the largest spacecraft ever in orbit, with a total mass of about 225 metric tons (almost one-half million pounds), orbiting some 218 nautical miles (404 km) above the Earth. After hatches on each side opened, STS-71 crew passed into Mir for a welcoming ceremony. On the same day, the Mir 18 crew officially transferred responsibility for the station to the Mir 19 crew, and the two crews switched spacecraft.

For the next five days, about 100 hours in total, joint U.S.-Russian operations were conducted, including biomedical investigations, and transfer of equipment to and from Mir. Fifteen separate biomedical and scientific investigations were conducted, using the Spacelab module installed in the aft portion of Atlantis's payload bay, and covering seven different disciplines: cardiovascular and pulmonary functions; human metabolism; neuroscience; hygiene, sanitation and radiation; behavioral performance and biology; fundamental biology; and microgravity research. The Mir 18 crew served as test subjects for investigations. Three Mir 18 crew members also carried out an intensive programme of exercise and other measures to prepare for re-entry into gravity environment after more than three months in space.

Numerous medical samples as well as disks and cassettes were transferred to Atlantis from Mir, including more than 100 urine and saliva samples, about 30 blood samples, 20 surface samples, 12 air samples, several water samples and numerous breath samples taken from Mir 18 crew members. Also moved was a broken Salyut-5 computer. Transferred to Mir were more than 450 kg of water generated by the orbiter for waste system flushing and electrolysis; specially designed spacewalking tools for use by the Mir 19 crew during a spacewalk to repair a jammed solar array on the Spektr module; and transfer of oxygen and nitrogen from Shuttle's environmental control system to raise air pressure on the station, to improve Mir's consumables margin.

The spacecraft undocked on July 4, following a farewell ceremony, with the Mir hatch closing at 3:32 pm EDT. July 3 and hatch on Orbiter Docking System shut 16 minutes later. Gibson compared separation sequence to a "cosmic" ballet: Prior to the Mir-Atlantis undocking, the Mir 19 crew temporarily abandoned station, flying away from it in their Soyuz spacecraft so they could record images of Atlantis and Mir separating. Soyuz unlatched at 6:55 am EDT, and Gibson undocked Atlantis from Mir at 7:10 am EDT. Whilst both spacecraft were undocked from Mir, the station suffered a computer malfunction and started to drift in attitude. The Mir 19 crew performed a hasty re-docking, monitored by Atlantis. They subsequently replaced computer hardware allowing them to regain attitude control.

The returning crew of eight equaled the largest crew (STS-61-A, October 1985) in Shuttle history. To ease their re-entry into gravity environment after more than 100 days in space, Mir 18 crew members Thagard, Dezhurov and Strekalov lay supine in custom-made recumbent seats installed prior to landing in the orbiter middeck.

Inflight problems included a glitch with General Purpose Computer 4 (GPC 4), which was declared failed when it did not synchronize with GPC 1; subsequent troubleshooting indicated it was an isolated event, and GPC 4 operated satisfactorily for the remainder of mission.

During the SAREX portion of the flight, the crew contacted several schools. One was Redlands High School in Redlands, California. Charlie Precourt was able to contact students, former students and technicians that built the communications package. A cross polarized, dual band yagi antenna array and automatic rotor was installed on the roof of the electronics classroom. A dual band radio was installed inside the radio room of the classroom. The contact window lasted about 10 minutes, during which time, about twelve people were able to ask questions. While most were basic or technical questions, one was peculiar. "What would happen of you sneezed inside your helmet?" Precourt answered that you'd probably, "spray your face shield a little bit.." and carry on.

External tank
The external tank used on this mission (ET-70) was involved in a historic marine salvage court case. The tank was being delivered by barge in November 1994, when the tow vehicle encountered issues in Hurricane Gordon. Their mayday signal was picked up by the oil tanker Cherry Valley, which responded and towed the tug and its cargo to safety. Under the tradition of marine salvage, NASA offered $5 million to the crew of the tanker as a reward, but the United States Department of Justice reduced the offer to $1 million. The tanker company and crew sued and were awarded $6.4 million, believed to be the largest such award in U.S. history. This was reduced to $4.125 million on appeal. The crew split the award with their employer. At least one crew member was able to use his cut of the proceeds to buy a house, which he calls "the house that NASA bought."

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: STS-71


text:
STS-70

STS-70 was the 21st flight of the Space Shuttle Discovery, and the last of 7 shuttle missions to carry a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS). This was the first shuttle mission controlled from the new mission control center room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

STS-70 was also the first flight of the new Block 1 orbiter main engine, designed to improve both engine performance and safety. The mission was launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 13, 1995, only six days after the landing of sister ship Atlantis, marking the fastest turnaround between flights in the history of the program.

Preparations and launch
STS-70 had originally moved ahead of STS-71 because of a delay in the launch of the Russian Spektr laboratory module to the Russian space station Mir. However, on May 31, 1995, shuttle managers assessed damage to the External Tank of STS-70 caused by nesting flicker woodpeckers. The damage consisted of about 71 holes (ranging in size from 4 inches in diameter to 1/2 inch in diameter) in the ETs thermal protection foam insulation. Technicians installed safeguards against additional damage. On June 2, NASA managers decided to delay the launch of Discovery in order to make repairs to the insulation, and STS-71 was moved ahead of STS-70. Discovery was rolled back to the VAB on June 8, and was returned to the pad on June 15.

Launch occurred on July 13, 1995, at 9:41:55.078 a.m. EDT. The launch window was 2 hours 30 min. The hatch was closed at 8:13am EDT and the count proceeded smoothly until T-31 sec. The count was held for 55 seconds at T-31 sec by the Booster Range Safety Engineer (CBRS) Tod Gracom at the LCC C-5 Console due to fluctuations seen on the external tank automatic gain control (AGC) ET range safety system receiver. Launch Commit Criteria contingency procedures were worked and the count then proceeded on schedule. STS-70 marked the maiden flight of the new Block 1 orbiter main engine. Engine number 2036 featured the new high-pressure liquid oxygen turbopump, a two-duct powerhead, baffleless main injector, single-coil heat exchanger and start sequence modifications. The Block I engine flew in the number one position on Discovery. The other two engines were of the existing Phase II design.

Mission highlights
The primary mission was the launch and deployment of the 7th Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-G) by means of the two-stage Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) solid rocket. It was built by TRW and weighs about 2200 kg. The satellite was ejected from Discovery's cargo bay exactly on time at 2:55 p.m. CDT, approximately six hours into the flight. The release of the satellite was overseen by Mission Specialists Donald Thomas and Mary Ellen Weber.

About 15 minutes later, Discovery's Commander Tom Henricks fired the shuttle's engines to raise the orbit and move away from the vicinity of the satellite and the IUS. At about 3:55 p.m., the IUS fired the first of two burns that would put TDRS-G into its proper, 22,000-mile-high geostationary orbit above the central Pacific Ocean at 178 degrees West longitude.

The deployment operations utilized three separate control centers; the White Sands ground station controlled the TDRS, the JSC Mission Control Center (MCC) controlled the shuttle, and the Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) control center at Onizuka Air Force Base in Sunnyvale California controlled the booster stage. Once it reached its destination, the fully deployed satellite had a wingspan of 57 ft. The TDRS was the sixth placed in operational use. TDRS-1 was launched aboard STS-6 on 1983-04-04 with a scheduled lifetime of seven years. The second satellite, TDRS-B, was lost aboard Challenger on mission STS-51-L. TDRS-3 was deployed from STS-26, TDRS-4 from STS-29, TDRS-5 from STS-43 and TDRS-6 was deployed by STS-54. The on-orbit TDRS network was rearranged and included two fully operational spacecraft occupying the TDRS East and West slots, one on-orbit fully functional spare, TDRS-1, which was nearly depleted having exceeded its planned lifetime, and the partially operational TDRS-3 spacecraft dedicated to supporting the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory and providing coverage an area that can't be seen by the other satellites known as the Zone of Exclusion.

Additional payloads and experiments
Secondary objectives of the mission were to fulfill the requirements of the Physiological and Anatomical Rodent Experiment / National Institutes of Health-Rodents (PARE/NIH-R); Bioreactor Demonstration System (BDS), Commercial Protein Crystal Growth (CPCG); Space Tissue Loss/National Institutes of Health-Cells (STL/NIH-C); Biological Research in Canisters (BRIC); Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment-II (SAREX-II), Visual Function Tester-4 (VFT-4); Hand-Held, Earth Oriented, Real-Time, Cooperative, User-Friendly, Location-Targeting and Environmental System (HERCULES); Microcapsules in Space-B (MIS-B); Windows Experiment (WINDEX); Radiation Monitoring Equipment-III (RME-III); and the Military Applications of Ship Tracks (MAST).

The Bioreactor Demonstration System was designed to use ground-based and space-bioreactor systems to grow individual cells into organized tissue that is morphologically and functionally similar to the original tissue or organ. The BDS was composed of a device developed at the Johnson Space Center that used a rotating cylinder to suspend cells and tissues in a growth medium, simulating some aspects of microgravity. The system, which was already used extensively in ground-based research, also provided for gas and nutrient exchange. The purpose of the flight experiment was to demonstrate the performance of the bioreactor in actual microgravity. As such, the primary goal was to assess the fluid dynamic characteristics of the bioreactor in microgravity.

A club membership patch from the world famous Coney Island Polar Bear Club was carried on this mission.

Landing
Landing opportunities at the Kennedy Space Center at 7:54 am EDT and 9:31 am July 21, 1995, were waved off due to a buildup of ground fog over the Shuttle Landing Facility. Flight Director Rich Jackson directed the five STS-70 astronauts to remain aloft for another day after poor visibility prevented Discovery's homecoming on the two consecutive landing opportunities. Discovery's astronauts were informed that their landing had been waved off for the day at 7:10am CDT after astronaut Steve Oswald, flying weather reconnaissance in a Shuttle Training Aircraft over the landing strip, reported that he could not see the three-mile-long runway from his vantage point. STS-70 landed at the Kennedy Space Center on July 22, 1995, at 8:02 a.m. EDT on Runway 33. Nose gear touchdown occurred at 8:02:11 am EDT (Mission Elapsed Time of 8 days 22 hours 20 minutes and 16 seconds) with wheels stop at 8:02:57 am (MET of 8 d 22 h 21 min 2 s). An earlier KSC landing opportunity at 6:26 am EDT was waved off due to marginal yet improving weather conditions at KSC.

title: STS-70


text:
STS-69

STS-69 was a Space Shuttle Endeavour mission, and the second flight of the Wake Shield Facility (WSF). The mission launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida on 7 September 1995. It was the 100th successful crewed NASA spaceflight, not including X-15 flights.

Spacewalks

 *  Voss and Gernhardt  – EVA 1
 * EVA 1 Start: 16 September 1995 – 08:20 UTC
 * EVA 1 End: 16 September 1995 – 15:06 UTC
 * Duration: 6 hours, 46 minutes

Mission highlights

The 11-day mission was the second flight of the Wake Shield Facility (WSF), a saucer-shaped satellite that was to fly free of the Shuttle for several days. The purpose of the WSF was to grow thin films in a near perfect vacuum created by the wake of the satellite as it moved through space. The crew also deployed and retrieved the Spartan 201 astronomy satellite, performed a six-hour spacewalk to test assembly techniques for the international Space Station and tested thermal improvements made to spacesuits used during space walks.

The Spartan 201 free-flyer made its third flight aboard the Shuttle. The Spartan 201 mission was a scientific research effort aimed at the investigation of the interaction between the Sun and its outflowing wind of charged particles. Spartan's goal was to study the outer atmosphere of the Sun and its transition into the solar wind that constantly flows past the Earth.

STS-69 saw the first flight of the International Extreme Ultraviolet Hitchhiker (IEH-1), the first of five planned flights to measure and monitor long-term variations in the magnitude of absolute extreme ultraviolet (EUV) flux coming from the Sun, and to study EUV emissions from the plasma torus system around Jupiter originating from its moon Io.

Also aboard Endeavour were the combined Capillary Pumped Loop-2 /Gas Bridge Assembly (CAPL-2/GBA) payload. This experiment consisted of the CAPL-2 Hitchhiker payload designed as an in-orbit microgravity demonstration of a cooling system planned for the Earth Observing System Program and the Thermal Energy Storage-2 payload, part of an effort to develop advanced energy generation techniques. Also a part of this payload were several Getaway Special (GAS) experiments which investigated areas such as the interaction of spacecraft attitude and orbit control systems with spacecraft structures, fluid-filled beams as structural dampers in space and the effects of smoldering combustion in a long-term microgravity environment.

Another payload flown with a connection to the development of the Space Station was the Electrolysis Performance Improvement Concept Study (EPICS). Supply of oxygen and hydrogen by electrolyzing water in space plays an important role in meeting NASA's needs and goals for future space missions. On-board generation of oxygen was expected to reduce the annual resupply requirement for the Space Station by approximately 5400 kg.

Other payloads aboard were the National Institutes of Health- Cells-4 (NIH-C4) experiment that investigates bone loss during space flight; the Biological Research in Canister-6 (BRIC-6) that studies the gravity-sensing mechanism within mammalian cells. Also flying were two commercial experiments. (CMIX-4) whose objectives included analysis of cell change in microgravity along with studies of neuro-muscular development disorders and the Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus-7 (CGBA-7). CGBA was a secondary payload that served as an incubator and data collection point for experiments in pharmaceuticals testing and biomedicine, bioprocessing and biotechnology, agriculture and the environment.

The Thermal Energy Storage (TES-2) experiment was also part of the CAPL-2/GBA-6. The TES-2 payload was designed to provide data for understanding the long-duration behavior of thermal energy storage fluoride salts that undergo repeated melting and freezing in microgravity. The TES-2 payload was designed to study the microgravity behavior of voids in lithium fluoride–calcium fluoride eutectic, a thermal energy storage salt. Data from this experiment would validate a computer code called TESSIM, useful for the analysis of heat receivers in advanced solar dynamic power system designs.

title: STS-69


text:
STS-73

STS-73 was a Space Shuttle program mission, during October–November 1995, on board the Space Shuttle Columbia. The mission was the second mission for the United States Microgravity Laboratory. The crew, who spent 16 days in space, were broken up into 2 teams, the red team and the blue team. The mission also included several Detailed Test Objectives or DTO's.

Mission highlights
The second United States Microgravity Laboratory (USML-2) Spacelab mission was the prime payload on STS-73. The 16-day flight continued a cooperative effort of the U.S. government, universities and industry to push back the frontiers of science and technology in "microgravity", the near-weightless environment of space.

On October 26, through pre-recorded video, Mission Commander Ken Bowersox threw out the first pitch for Game 5 of the 1995 World Series between the Cleveland Indians and the Atlanta Braves from orbit.

Some of the experiments carried on the USML-2 payload were suggested by the results of the first USML mission that flew aboard Columbia in 1992 during STS-50. The USML-1 mission provided new insights into theoretical models of fluid physics, the role of gravity in combustion and flame spreading, and how gravity affects the formation of semiconductor crystals. Data collected from several protein crystals grown on USML-1 enabled scientists to determine the molecular structures of those proteins.

USML-2 built on that foundation. Technical knowledge gained was incorporated into the mission plan to enhance procedures and operations. Where possible, experiment teams refined their hardware to increase scientific understanding of basic physical processes on Earth and in space, as well as to prepare for more advanced operations aboard the International Space Station and other future space programs.

USML-2 Flight controllers and experiment scientists directed science activities from NASA's Spacelab Mission Operations Control facility at the Marshall Space Flight Center. In addition, science teams at several NASA centers and universities monitored and supported operations of a number of experiments.

Other payloads on board included the Orbital Acceleration Research Experiment (OARE), Space Acceleration Measurement System (SAMS), Three Dimensional Microgravity Accelerometer (3DMA), Suppression of Transient Accelerations By Levitation Evaluation (STABLE) and the High-Packed Digital Television Technical Demonstration system.

Launch was originally scheduled for 25 September 1995 but endured six scrubbed launch attempts before its 20 October 1995 lift off. STS-73 and STS-61C both carry the distinction of being tied for the most scrubbed launches, each having launched on their seventh attempt.

After the mission, five of the crew members, namely, Bowersox, Coleman, Thornton, Leslie, and Sacco appeared on the 13 February 1996 episode of Home Improvement, "Fear of Flying", on a segment of Tool Time. It was Bowersox's second time on the show.

title: STS-73


text:
Talk:List of rulers of Provence

Comment
Yes, the Bourbons used Cte. de Provence. A younger brother of Louis XVI was a Cte. de Provence. Wetman 21:59, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Holy Roman Empire/French
Just because the younger brother of the French king became count in 1246 does not mean it became part of France. My understanding was that, like other parts of the old Burgundian kingdom, Provence is generally considered to have remained part of the Empire until it fell into the French royal domain in 1481. Obviously the Counts of Provence, especially the Valois counts after 1382, were more oriented towards France than towards the Empire, but the same is also true of, for instance, the Dukes of Lorraine, who were clearly considered to be part of the Empire. john k 02:24, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

The 1911 Britannica article supports the idea that it was not considered a part of France until 1486. Indeed, Emperor Charles IV was crowned King of Arles in 1365, suggesting it was still considered part of the Holy Roman Empire at least that late. john k 02:37, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Scope
@Lithopsian Hi, it looks like you disagree with some of my recent edits. Could you explain why? Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 14:57, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

 * Indeed. I'm not qualified to give a strong opinion on the distinction between rulers, monarchs, and governors of Provence, but it seems like a split of a small section of a relatively small article that changes the content of the article sufficiently that it then merits being renamed is something that should be discussed first.  Neither a content split nor a size split seem compelling, but if it really is a blatantly-obvious thing then a discussion will resolve quickly.  Otherwise, well let's see what people say.  I've reverted the page move but, other than a small technical edit, not the split itself.  A bit messy, probably the split should be reverted so that it doesn't seem to be assuming the result of any discussion.  Lithopsian (talk) 16:22, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
 * @Lithopsian Alright. I split the governors off because there has been a separate category for governors ever since 2009: Category:Governors of Provence. Lots of other Wikipedias, in particular French Wikipedia, already had separate lists: fr:Liste des gouverneurs de Provence and fr:Liste des souverains de Provence. It was only reasonable to split them on English Wikipedia as well.
 * Secondly, the move is part of a large-scale process of moving away from the ambiguous term "rulers" to something more specific (usually "monarchs"), depending on the circumstances. (If you'd like to know the background, please read Categories_for_discussion/Log/2023_February_25). Long story short: the ambiguity of the term "rulers" messes up our categorisation system and puts people in places where they do not belong, because "ruler" can mean anything you like, and not everyone has the same understanding. If you look at the Wikidata item of this list, you can immediately see the confusion that creates (and this is just a small selection of all languages:
 * ca Llista de comtes de Provença
 * de Liste der Grafen und Markgrafen der Provence
 * en List of rulers of Provence
 * eo Listo de suverenoj de Provenco
 * es Anexo:Gobernantes de Provenza
 * fr Liste des souverains de Provence
 * oc Lista dei dirigents de Provença
 * pt Lista de governantes da Provença
 * sv Grevarna av Provence
 * So what is this list really about? Counts (2)? Counts and margraves? "Rulers" (whatever that is)? Sovereigns (2)? Governors (2)? "Leaders" (whatever that is)? At the very least, we should split off those who got into office through hereditary succession (monarchs, sovereigns?) and those who were appointed by the king of France (governors). I think you'll agree with me on that, right? Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 17:59, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

 * I do not think our categories should be driving article titling. Moreover, I oppose a large-scale process of moving away from the ambiguous term "rulers". The vague term "ruler" is appropriate in many cases, where the nature of the office changes over time. The Merovingian dukes (who were not in fact all dukes) were governors just as much as the later governors now listed at List of governors of Provence. The later counts and margraves are not best described as monarchs or governors, since they occupied a different role, being neither sovereigns nor appointees. Srnec (talk) 01:39, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

 * Given that there is some need for discussion, I have reverted the split of content from this article. List of governors of Provence remains since it isn't causing much harm for now and can be referred to for an explanation of any intended split.  I'd suggest discussing only this article, at least initially.  I see huge scope for a trainwreck trying to address all the similar articles at once.  On the wider issue, it might be worth posting up at a relevant project page, a good idea anyway when planning wholesale structural changes to a group of articles that have been around for a while.  It may be that the categories discussion brought out all the interested parties already, or it might not.  Lithopsian (talk) 13:38, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I've put a link to this talk page at Categories_for_discussion/Log/2023_April_26. To summarise/clarify what I've done and said so far: I intend to make clearer distinctions between various types of "rulers" as I and many others have been doing for months, and my edits here logically resulted from it. The Wikidata item helps to demonstrate what a confused mess the current situation is, and that we need to clarify what this list is even about. Splitting off the governors into a separate list (as German, French, Italian and Russian Wikipedia had already done and a separate category (Category:Governors of Provence, which already existed on English Wikipedia since 2009) seems a very first reasonable step to me. I'm open to other titles than "monarchs" for what remains of the current list. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 13:58, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I've added some references to confirm some basic facts mostly already mentioned in the lead section. This list needs more RS in general. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 14:26, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
 * @Sovietblobfish recently made some edits to List of governors of Provence after I split it off, maybe you would like to comment? Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 17:33, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't know too much about Wikipedia policy, I keep to my content editing corner but at least to me it makes sense to separate governors/grand seneschals from sovereign counts. The governor has no sovereign authority over Provence, and is thus distinct from a hereditary count/duke/margrave in an important enough way to warrant a separate page.
 * My ambition long term would be for all major French provinces to have a 'list of governors' article, but for the moment sadly, only Provence and Languedoc do. Sovietblobfish (talk) 18:44, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your feedback! Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 21:49, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
 * @Srnec @Lithopsian thoughts on my and Sovietblobfish's recent comments? Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 19:55, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Here is an idea. Split this article into four (five):
 * List of Frankish governors of Provence – for the governors (of whatever title) under the Merovingians and Carolingians
 * Kingdom of Provence – currently a redirect to Lower Burgundy, move it and house the Carolingian and Bosonid kings there
 * County of Provence – keep the list of counts here (this article should exist regardless)
 * Marquisate of Provence – keep the lists of marquis here (this article should exist regardless)
 * List of French governors of Provence – for the governors under the French crown
 * Leave this article as a set index. There is a long History of Provence article, but it is not well sourced or well organized. I am not sure that "List of Frankish governors of Provence" is the best way to handle our somewhat spotty information regarding that period, so consider this a mere suggestion. The French Wiki has a single list article like ours (albeit misleadingly named souverains, which absolutely none of these people save a few kings were). Srnec (talk) 23:30, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I quite like this idea. For the Frankish ones, the List suggests they were named dux and rector Provinciae (which per rector #3 could mean director, ruler, master, governor in classical Latin; I suppose "official" or "manager" would also cut it), but without source. I suppose we really do need to dig for RS to be able to decide on this matter. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 22:41, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

"rulers" below the rank of king are still "monarchs". WP:COGNOMEN states: #5 European monarchs whose rank is below that of king (e.g., grand dukes, electors, dukes, princes), should be at the location "{Monarch's first name and ordinal}, {Title} of {Country}". Examples: Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria, Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg. In several past and ongoing Rulers CfR-related discussions (including this one), the argument is made that e.g. "dukes" should not be categorised as "monarchs" because they are not "kings", but this guideline shows that they are "monarchs" nonetheless. I've also frequently invoked the fact that the List of German monarchs in 1918 identifies Emperors, Kings, Grand Dukes and Dukes as "monarchs", even though Grand Dukes and Dukes are below the royal level. This is not a valid argument to keep "rulers" in catnames or lists of rulers titles. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 10:58, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I would not use the term 'monarch' for a non-sovereign ruler below a king. Our guidelines are not RS. For what it's worth, the Wiktionary articles on 'monarch' and 'monarchy' agree with me. The word has strong connotations of sovereignty, which does not apply to rulers in the Holy Roman Empire. Srnec (talk) 20:30, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Srnec So Frederick Augustus III of Saxony should be taken out of the Category:Saxon monarchs tree? Because he was not 'sovereign' in the sense of having Wilhelm II, German Emperor above him. Perhaps we should then also remove both mentions of Monarchy abolished, because the Kingdom of Saxony ceased being a "monarchy" in 1871 due to losing its sovereignty to the German Empire? I'm just testing to see if this reasoning holds up; I'm curious if you would the terms 'monarch' and 'monarchy' in these cases. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 22:00, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I said below a king. Where the titulature is royal, the term 'monarch' is fine. Of couse, 'king' has strong connotations of sovereignty too! It's just that there are in fact cases of the title for non-sovereigns, since there is a higher title (emperor, king of kings). But I think titles like prince and duke have the opposite connotations. They suggest non-sovereigns, it's just that there are cases where a sovereign has been content to leave his old title be. Srnec (talk) 01:57, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Alright, so a monarch doesn't necessarily need to be sovereign in all cases. A non-sovereign king may still be a monarch. So how about... the subcategories of Category:German monarchs?
 * Category:Grand Dukes of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
 * Category:Dukes of Bremen and Verden
 * Etc. About half of them are "Dukes" or "Grand Dukes".
 * Or, if we believe English Wikipedia has gotten it all wrong, how about English-language literature? Handbook of Imperial Germany (2009) p. 70:
 * Duchy of Anhalt: hereditary constitutional monarchy
 * Duchy of Brunswick: hereditary limited constitutional monarchy
 * Etc. In fact, all of the states identified as "monarchies" on this page were below the level of kingdom.
 * How about German Wikipedia's de:Kategorie:Deutsche Monarchie? In particular:
 * de:Kategorie:Monarchie (Herzogtum Braunschweig-Lüneburg) A non-sovereign duchy (Herzogtum) is said to be/have a monarchy (Monarchie). This category shouldn't be able to exist if dukes are by definition not "monarchs". It's a contradiction in terms. Or is it?
 * de:Kategorie:Person (badische Monarchie) A non-sovereign grand duchy is said to have a monarchy with grand dukes, grand duchesses, margraves, margravines, and princes.
 * Now, it may be that, unlike Germany, France simply has a different tradition of identifying "monarchs", not awarded to anyone below the level of king? Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 23:44, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
 * In 1806, a lot of rulers below the rank of king became automatically sovereign. So Germany is a bit of a special case. And of course Landeshoheit—the German princes had a lot more autonomy than French aristocrats under the Bourbons. But it might be better to ask specifically what you think it is that makes the count of Toulouse a monarch of Provence because he held a marquisate there? How low does it go? Were the counts of Valentinois monarchs? The lords of Baux? Hereditary lordship cannot be synonymous with monarchy. And if a monarch can be elected (he can), why does heredity have anything to do with it? Srnec (talk) 14:24, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Ok, that answers some of my questions.
 * The way I look at and apply the term "monarchy" is how virtually all dictionaries would. It has a set of elements, not all of which always apply simultaneously. You seem to at least partially agree with that, based on what you're saying here.
 * These elements commonly include:
 * Monarchy is a system of government...
 * ...in which one person - the monarch - has supreme executive power.
 * The monarch is de jure or de facto sovereign (but may be bound by a higher monarch, or a constitution).
 * The monarch is designated through dynastic hereditary succession (though the rules of succession aren't always fixed, let alone respected – whenever this system fails, it result may result in a war of succession), unless it is an elective monarchy (in which a small elite group of people - who are themselves nobles through hereditary succession - gets to choose the next monarch from their own midst).
 * "Monarchy" is the default term for a system of government which is not a republic, that is, a state in which the head of state is elected or appointed in some way that distinguishes it from an elective monarchy. Debates continue about whether to describe various cases as "monarchies", "republics", or both. Republic of Florence, Republic of Venice, Republic of Genoa etc. Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Novgorod Republic, Pskov Republic, etc. are well-known cases of what may arguably called elective monarchies that are nevertheless frequently called "republics" in literature and here on Wikipedia. (The Dutch Republic with its first de facto and later de jure hereditary stadtholderate is another complicated case that continues to defy scholars, but it's not an elective monarchy, and usually categorised as a republic.)
 * According to the narrow meaning, the term "monarchy" is associated with the level of "king" or above, but according to the broader meaning, it can apply to any level which complies with most of these elements.
 * A lordship (seigneurie) fulfills 1, 2, partially 3, 4, and 5.
 * That doesn't mean the Lord is a "king" or higher; it means that
 * (1) the Lordship is a system of government,
 * (2) in which the Lord has or can have supreme executive power (often including the right to put his subjects to death, to conclude treaties and to wage war without asking permission from higher up);
 * (3) is not de jure but often de facto sovereign (plenty of lordships in the Low Countries and Holy Roman Empire are examples of this);
 * (4) is designated through dynastic hereditary succession (usually agnatic primogeniture) – whenever this system fails, it result may result in a war of succession, and the Baussenque Wars are an example of that with the Lords of Baux;
 * (5) is not a republic (unless we may be talking about the Lords of Florence, for example);
 * (6) Therefore, according to the broader meaning, it's a monarchy. According to the narrow meaning, the whole question is a non-starter: anyone below the rank of king is not a "monarch" by definition.
 * Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 07:51, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

There has been no discussion since May 14, and I have closed the CfD as no consensus, so I have opted to start an RfC on the remaining open question. –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 19:32, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

RfC: Scope and title
Which option would best resolve the ambiguity in the scope and title of the current article? –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 19:33, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Option 1: Rename to List of monarchs of Provence, and do nothing else.
 * Option 2: Rename to "List of monarchs and XYZ of Provence" for some XYZ, and do nothing else.
 * Option 3: Split by office, such as counts and dukes, and leave a WP:SIA at this title. List of governors of Provence has already been split to a standalone list.
 * Option 4: Do nothing.

 * Option 4: Keep the current title. Provence according to the article had kings, dukes, counts, margraves as rulers of the territory. The option 1 monarchs could confuse things and seem to be specific only to the kings and emperors. Also, per WP:TITLE, "Generally, article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources. If we check Google Scholar, we find the term "rulers of Provence" used by sources. But if we search "monarchs of Provence", we have no results whatsoever.
 * About Option 2 XYZ, it would be too cumbersome of a title that would leave other sort of rulers out. Per WP:TITLE, "A good Wikipedia article title has the five following characteristics: Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Concision, and Consistency. XYZ is not concise, probably not as recognizable as rulers, not very natural, nor precise (mostly if leaving some rulers titles out).
 * Option 3 seems to be way premature because the page is only six kb, when WP:SIZERULE suggests that for less than 40 kb "Length alone does not justify division". Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 22:56, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Option 4: I outlined a potential split above, but it is based on the writing of articles and not just dividing up a list. Srnec (talk) 23:39, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Option 4 Johnbod (talk) 02:43, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Option 3: I have come to understand some of the objections against "monarchs" (for which I think Srnec has made good points), but I still find "rulers" to be unhelpful and vague. So options 1 and 2 are not very attractive (I agree with Thinker78 on that), but neither is 4. I would therefore recommend option 3, not because of the size rule, but because I think we shouldn't be lumping offices which are very different together. Because some people say kings are "monarchs", but dukes, counts, margraves, governors etc. aren't, I think this is all the more reason not to be lumping them together in a single list as if they all held exactly the same position. We agree they didn't, otherwise people wouldn't have objected to calling all of them "monarchs" except the kings. Given that the categories are already split up into these respective titles/offices, I think Option 3 is best. I would make the following suggestion (comment if you think this can be better organised, I'm open to lots of ideas):
 * List of dukes of Provence (c. 534 – c.  860)
 * Category:Dukes of Provence already exists.
 * List of kings of Provence OR List of kings of Lower Burgundy (855–933)
 * Category:Kings of Lower Burgundy and Category:Queens consort of Lower Burgundy already exist, see the 2015 CfR for why they were renamed.
 * List of counts and margraves of Provence (961–1481)
 * Category:Counts of Provence and Category:Margraves of Provence already exist, and I think these offices can and should be combined in a list (as everyone will probably agree; Graf/graaf and Markgraf/markgraaf etc. in Germanic languages including Frankish (grāve / marcgrāve) are very closely related terms), but it's okay if we keep the categories separate.
 * List of governors of Provence (1481–1790)
 * Already ✅; Category:Governors of Provence already existed.
 * I hope this suggestion is somewhat along the lines of what Srnec suggested above. I'm open to making changes. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 12:53, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
 * What about Heads of state or government of Provence? Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 02:46, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I would be open to that, but I think it invites more problems than it would solve. The central question (which is perhaps a valid objection against using the term "monarch" in certain situations) is:
 * Which person or entity has "sovereignty" in the given circumstances?
 * This leads to other questions:
 * Was Provence a "state", and if so, when? Or was Francia/France or Lower Burgundy or the Holy Roman Empire always the "sovereign" entity above it?
 * If a Merovingian rex appoints a dux to govern Provence for him, i.e. in his stead, who is the real "ruler of Provence"? The Merovingian rex, who holds Provence as one of many hereditary possessions, or the dux he appointed to govern Provence in his name, and might develop his own dynasty (which, at times, he did)?
 * Can we call this Merovingian rex the "head of state", and his dux the "head of government"? Or was the latter more akin to a "governor", even if his position could become hereditary (which, at times, it did)?
 * Particularly question no. #2 contains my main objection against the vague and ambiguous catch-all term "ruler", because it doesn't mean anything specific, and everyone can make it mean whatever they want it to mean. In the past 6 months, I have seen all sorts of different positions ranging from the Emperor of China to the elected mayor of Waterford (a city in Ireland) and German postal ministers being called a "ruler". That really doesn't help our readers understand what we mean. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 15:17, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Option 4: Keep the current title. I just do not see major ambiguity here, and would regret the lost scope and continuity if the rulership wass broken into disjointed articles just so one could be purely kins ruling Provence versus Regents ruling provence, etcetera.  It seems better to have one chronological history and explain the variations in rulership within the article.   In any case, the policy WP:TITLE part WP:PRECISION seems to say limit how precise the title needs to be and this title seems enough.  Cheers Markbassett (talk) 23:12, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:List of rulers of Provence