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Blue Peter

British children's television programme

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ1247639 ↗
Source-derived summary

Blue Peter is a British children's television entertainment programme created by John Hunter Blair. It is the longest-running children's TV show in the world, having been broadcast since October 1958. It was broadcast primarily from BBC Television Centre in London until September 2011, when the programme moved to dock10 studios at MediaCityUK in Salford, Greater Manchester. The show is currently broadcast from Campfield Studios in Manchester as of September 2025.

It is currently aired on the CBBC television channel on Fridays at 5 p.m. The show is also repeated on Saturday mornings on BBC Two, Sundays at 9:00 a.m. and a BSL version is shown on Tuesdays at 2:00 p.m. For decades the show was regularly broadcast live; however, in March 2025, a fully pre-recorded format was introduced.

Following its original creation, the programme was developed by a BBC team led by Biddy Baxter; she became the programme editor in 1965, relinquishing the role in 1988. Throughout the show's history there have been forty-four presenters; currently, it is hosted by Abby Cook, Shini Muthukrishnan and the puppet Hacker T Dog.

Editorial summary

“Blue Peter” enters the record as british children's television programme. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Blue, Peter and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1958, 2011, 2025, 1965—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Blue, Peter and British.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Blue Peter” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Blue, Peter and British provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1247639. Authority coordinates are 51.511, -0.228. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1958, 2011, 2025 and 1965.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Blue Peter”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Blue Peter primary sources, Blue Peter archive and Blue research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Blue Peter”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Blue Peter” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.