Reading Rainbow Kickstarter Heads Into Home Stretch

An anonymous reader writes "A month ago, LeVar Burton and his friends at Reading Rainbow created a Kickstarter campaign designed to bring their app for the iPad and Kindle Fire to the Web at large. They asked for a million dollars, and quickly blew the doors off their goal, receiving over three million dollars in three days. There are 48 hours remaining in the fundraiser, which has garnered over 4.5 million dollars, and with over 92,000 contributors, is the most heavily backed Kickstarter campaign of all time. To sweeten the pot, Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane has offered to match any pledges over the $4 million mark, up to an additional million dollars."

Comments

Seth MacFarlane

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't necessarily like everything he has done in his career, but he has certainly been putting a lot of money into solid causes lately. The Cosmos series was pretty good and now this. Respect.

Re:Seth MacFarlane

[mythosaz]

He makes his money telling dick jokes (n.b. I enjoy dick jokes), but he does seem to be doing the right things with said dick joke money.

...unless of course you're a Republican. Then he's a jerk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

This isn't going to do much

[asmkm22]

The problem with (new) Reading Rainbow is that it will end up targeting and catering to kids that are already interested and proficient in reading, due to those kids being in families able to buy into the subscription. Twenty years ago, it worked because even poor families generally had at least a single crappy TV with rabbit ears, which was enough to get PBS. That 4 or 5 million that ends up getting raised would go a lot further by addressing actual core issues with poverty, rather than giving kids who already know and like to read even more reason to do so.

Re:This isn't going to do much

[raydobbs]

I thought one of the things they were hoping to do with the extended stretch goals is give subscriptions to poorer communities (libraries in rural or inner-city settings, etc) so that it could be utilized by the people who couldn't normally afford it.

Re:This isn't going to do much

[sandytaru]

That was part of the stretch goals. The initial 1 million was to bring an updated version of the show to the web. At 5 million, they wanted to bring it to all platforms, including mobile devices, video game consoles and set top boxes too.

Re:This isn't going to do much

[dnavid]

The problem with (new) Reading Rainbow is that it will end up targeting and catering to kids that are already interested and proficient in reading, due to those kids being in families able to buy into the subscription. Twenty years ago, it worked because even poor families generally had at least a single crappy TV with rabbit ears, which was enough to get PBS. That 4 or 5 million that ends up getting raised would go a lot further by addressing actual core issues with poverty, rather than giving kids who already know and like to read even more reason to do so.

That makes an enormous leap of logic, that children who have any sort of basic literacy no longer need any help or encouragement. A four year old that can read isn't automatically going to become a twelve year old that can read better and is still interested in reading anything other than text messages. I would argue that in today's world its even more important to encourage reading because unlike the days when television was the great distraction today there are far more sources of distraction competing for children's attention spans. Promoting the notion that reading is not a necessary evil but rather the gateway skill of learning, intellectual inquiry, and exposure to ideas is I believe incredibly valuable.

When I was very young, my father taught me to read, for which I will always be grateful. But he also taught me to *want* to read, and that's been the singular reason for my success in life over the years. He couldn't have done more to set me up for success if he handed me a million dollars when I was three (which he did not have nor ever would have).

Sure, you can always argue with priorities; pick any priority you want to spend money on and I can explain why that's the wrong place to spend money compared to some other place. But if LeVar Burton and his Kickstarter supporters (full disclosure: I am a supporter of the KS project) want to spend resources improving the lives and futures of children who deserve it just as much as any other children, I don't consider that a "problem" just because it doesn't mesh with someone else's priorities. Those people should invest their time, energy, and money on their own priorities instead of criticizing those that are willing to do so. I would respect that far more than armchair critics nit-picking other people's constructive efforts from the sidelines.

Library hours

[tepples]

give subscriptions to poorer communities (libraries in rural or inner-city settings, etc)

Getting children to commute to these libraries might be a challenge. A lot of public libraries close for the night around the time the parents get home from work, and then they close for the weekend.

Re:CLARIFICATION TO THE SUMMARY

[turp182]

The summary mentions that funding is at $4.5 million and Seth will match $1 million above $4 million.

The project is at $4.66 million now with 41 hours left. Seth is going to be in for $1 million.

I like his shows, but he is showing some true character lately. Good guy all around.