It ran for 33 years and was critically acclaimed for focusing on children's emotional and physical concerns, such as death, sibling rivalry, school enrollment, and divorce.

His work in children's television has been widely lauded, and he received more than forty honorary degrees and several awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 1997 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002.

Rogers influenced many writers and producers of children's television shows, and his broadcasts provided comfort during tragic events, even after his death.

[2] His father, James Hillis Rogers, was "a very successful businessman"[3] who was president of the McFeely Brick Company, one of Latrobe's most prominent businesses.

His mother, Nancy (née McFeely), knitted sweaters for American soldiers from western Pennsylvania who were fighting in Europe and regularly volunteered at the Latrobe Hospital.

[6] Through an ancestor who immigrated from Germany to the U.S., Johannes Meffert (born 1732), Rogers is the sixth cousin of actor Tom Hanks, who portrays him in the film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019).

[18][note 1] After graduating in 1951, he worked at NBC in New York City as floor director of Your Hit Parade, The Kate Smith Hour, and Gabby Hayes's children's show, and as an assistant producer of The Voice of Firestone.

He used many puppet characters developed during this time, such as Daniel the Striped Tiger (named after WQED's station manager, Dorothy Daniel, who gave Rogers a tiger puppet before the show's premiere),[24] King Friday XIII, Queen Sara Saturday (named after Rogers' wife),[25] X the Owl, Henrietta, and Lady Elaine, in his later work.

[51] Every episode begins with a camera's-eye view of a model of a neighborhood, then panning in closer to a representation of a house while a piano instrumental of the theme song, "Won't You be My Neighbor?

[52] The camera zooms in to a model representing Mr. Rogers' house, then cuts to the house's interior and pans across the room to the front door, which Rogers opens as he sings the theme song to greet his visitors while changing his suit jacket to a cardigan (knitted by his mother)[53] and his dress shoes to sneakers, "complete with a shoe tossed from one hand to another".

He often feeds his fish, cleans up any props he has used, and returns to the front room, where he sings the closing song while changing back into his dress shoes and jacket.

[note 2] Mister Rogers' Neighborhood emphasized young children's social and emotional needs, and unlike another PBS show, Sesame Street, which premiered in 1969, did not focus on cognitive learning.

[55] Writer Kathy Merlock Jackson said, "While both shows target the same preschool audience and prepare children for kindergarten, Sesame Street concentrates on school-readiness skills while Mister Rogers Neighborhood focuses on the child's developing psyche and feelings and sense of moral and ethical reasoning".

[56] The Neighborhood also spent fewer resources on research than Sesame Street, but Rogers used early childhood education concepts taught by his mentor Margaret McFarland, Benjamin Spock, Erik Erikson, and T. Berry Brazelton in his lessons.

[57] As The Washington Post noted, Rogers taught young children about civility, tolerance, sharing, and self-worth "in a reassuring tone and leisurely cadence".

The clip of Rogers' testimony, which was televised and has since been viewed by millions of people on the internet, helped to secure funding for PBS for many years afterward.

Rogers' guests included Hoagy Carmichael, Helen Hayes, Milton Berle, Lorin Hollander, poet Robert Frost's daughter Lesley, and Willie Stargell.

According to writer Shea Tuttle, Rogers considered his faith a fundamental part of his personality and "called the space between the viewer and the television set 'holy ground'".

[99][102] King called him "that unique television star with a real spiritual life",[102] emphasizing the values of patience, reflection, and "silence in a noisy world".

[99] King reported that despite Rogers' family's wealth, he cared little about making money, and lived frugally, especially as he and his wife grew older.

After Mister Rogers' Neighborhood began airing in the U.S., the letters increased in volume, and he hired staff member and producer Hedda Sharapan to answer them, but he read, edited, and signed each one.

[87] According to Junod, he did nothing to change his weight from the 143 pounds (65 kg) he weighed for most of his adult life; by 1998, this also included napping daily, going to bed at 9:30 P.M., and sleeping eight hours per night without interruption.

[108] In 2019, social media users shared an excerpt from the 2018 biography The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers, which recounts Rogers telling openly gay friend Dr. William Hirsch that he "must be right smack in the middle" of a one-to-ten sexuality scale, because "I have found women attractive, and I have found men attractive.

Barker officiated the service; also in attendance were Pittsburgh philanthropist Elsie Hillman, former Good Morning America host David Hartman, The Very Hungry Caterpillar author Eric Carle, and Arthur creator Marc Brown.

Businesswoman and philanthropist Teresa Heinz, PBS President Pat Mitchell, and executive director of The Pittsburgh Project Saleem Ghubril gave remarks.

—Fred Rogers[125] Whenever a great tragedy strikes—war, famine, mass shootings, or even an outbreak of populist rage—millions of people turn to Fred's messages about life.

—Rogers biographer Maxwell King[126] Marc Brown, creator of another PBS children's show, Arthur, considered Rogers both a friend and "a terrific role model for how to use television and the media to be helpful to kids and families".

[129] She and the other producers of Blue's Clues used many of Rogers' techniques, such as using child developmental and educational research and having the host speak directly to the camera and transition to a make-believe world.

[135][136] In 2017, video of the testimony again went viral after President Donald Trump proposed defunding several arts-related government programs including PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts.

[179] Several pieces of art are dedicated to Rogers throughout Pittsburgh, including an eleven-foot (3.4 m) tall, 7,000-pound (3,200 kg) bronze statue of him in the North Shore neighborhood.