Your 'original neighbor,' Mister Rogers is coming to a screen near you starting Monday, thanks to the Amazon-owned video service Twitch.
The service will host a free, 18-day-long marathon broadcast of all 886 episodes of the classic public television series 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood' beginning at 3 pm ET Monday, May 15, and running through June 3 at twitch.tv/misterrogers.
According to Variety, the marathon will include some episodes that have only aired once in its 1968-2001 run that actually pre-dates the organization of PBS.
The marathon will kick-off with Fred Rogers, host of 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood' delivering testimony before a US Senate committee about the value of public television in 1969.
The series was originally created in Toronto in the early 1960s before debuting regionally in the eastern US in 1966. A national premiere came in 1968 on the old NET. National Educational Television was the precursor network to PBS, which did not go on the air until October 1970.
Please, won't you be our neighbor?
— Twitch (@Twitch) May 11, 2017
All 886 episodes of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood are coming to Twitch on May 15th!https://t.co/YG4I7JlKak pic.twitter.com/VKeD2eo7Ra
For Twitch fans, the 'Mister Rogers' marathon will include a custom set of emoji that viewers will be able to use in the channel's live chat while they watch. In addition, Twitch will host a PBS fundraiser to go along with the marathon, encouraging viewers to donate money to support their local PBS station.
Twitch allows video game fans broadcast their gaming adventures to fans live across the web, but it also has been used over the past year to provide marathon broadcasts of beloved television painter Bob Ross' program The Joy of Painting and airings of Julia Child's The French Chef. In March, the platform aired a continuous marathon of 23 seasons of Power Rangers.
