Did Education Dept.'s Shift Help Kill PBS's 'Reading Rainbow'?
By Ed O'Keefe
The PBS reading show "Reading Rainbow" -- starring "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and "Roots" alum LeVar Burton -- ends its 26-year run on Friday. Its longevity was the third-longest for a public television children's show, beaten only by "Sesame Street" and "Mister Rogers Neighborhood."
Actor LeVar Burton, host of "Reading Rainbow" (Reuters)
(As a young child in the '80s, The Eye fondly recalls watching all three programs every weekday before switching over to "The Price is Right" later in the morning. But we digress...)
A Friday morning NPR report noted the show's conclusion and aired comments by John Grant, director of content at the show's home station, WNED in Buffalo. Producers were unable to secure the several hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to renew the show's broadcast rights, Grant said.
Why? According to NPR:
Grant says the funding crunch is partially to blame, but the decision to end Reading Rainbow can also be traced to a shift in the philosophy of educational television programming. The change started with the Department of Education under the Bush administration, he explains, which wanted to see a much heavier focus on the basic tools of reading -- like phonics and spelling.
Grant says that [the Public Broadcasting Service], [the Corporation for Public Broadcasting] and the Department of Education put significant funding toward programming that would teach kids how to read -- but that's not what Reading Rainbow was trying to do.
"Reading Rainbow taught kids why to read," Grant says. "You know, the love of reading -- [the show] encouraged kids to pick up a book and to read."
In the report, a PBS official acknowledged the shift in reading philosophy from "how do we get kids interested?" to a focus on phonics.
A spokesman for the Education Department did not return a request for comment or clarification. (If and when an answer arrives, we'll post it here.)
In the meantime, take a trip down Memory Lane and sing along with the show's theme song. Oh, and leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
Read the follow-up item here.
''Reading Rainbow'', an American children's television series is to stop showing on television.  It ceased to be shown on Friday after a 26 year long run because of a funding shortfall of several hundred thousand dollars needed to renew the broadcast rights.

The PBS show has more than two-dozen Emmy awards, and its run is shorter only than ''Sesame Street'' and ''Mister Rogers' Neighborhood''.

Each episode of the show would focus on a theme in a specific book and then explore that theme through multiple stories.  Each show would also provide recommendations for books that children should look for when they went to their library.

John Grant, from WNED Buffalo (Reading Rainbow's home station) said "Reading Rainbow taught kids why to read,... the love of reading — the show encouraged kids to pick up a book and to read."  

Linda Simensky, vice president for children's programming at PBS, said "We've been able to identify the earliest steps that we need to take.  Now we know what we need to do first. Even just from five years ago, I think we all know so much more about how to use television to teach."  She went on to say that the running length of the show was "miraculous".

It is believed by some, including John Grant, that both the funding crunch and a shift in the philosophy of educational television programming contributed to ending the series.