Barney, a huggable six-foot-four-inch talking purple dinosaur, starred in a daily half-hour children's television program that premiered April 6, 1992, on PBS. In 1988, the character's creator, Sheryl Leach, had grown dissatisfied with the selection of home videos on the market to amuse her young son. She wrote scripts for a children's video featuring a stuffed bear that came to life but changed the central character to a dinosaur, capitalizing on the renewed interest among children. Leach produced three "Barney and the Backyard Gang" videos and marketed them through day-care centers and video stores.

A PBS executive saw the videos and in 1991 secured a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to produce thirty episodes of the series. The PBS series was entitled Barney and Friends and featured Barney (played by David Joyner, voiced by Bob West), his younger dinosaur sidekick Baby Bop (Jeff Ayers, voiced by...