Did you watch Reading Rainbow yesterday? If you missed it, that's too bad, because PBS' third-longest running show (behind only Sesame Street and Mr. Roger's Neighborhood) ended its 26 year run on Friday.
According to NPR, the children's program is being cut from the PBS stable of educational programming because of ... wait for it ... the Bush administration.
Apparently, due largely in part to rising illiteracy rates, the educational policies instituted by our last president put more of a focus on teaching children about "the basic tools of reading - like phonics and spelling." As a result, the Department of Education now has far less government funding for a show that only tells kids why they should read rather than teach them how to read.
Because of the increased fees to renew the show's broadcast license coupled with the new direction for how television should be used to teach, no one involved could (or seemed to want to) pick up the inflated tab.
While I understand perfectly well why this is happening, it still bothers me. Reading Rainbow is an American institution. I can remember watching it as a kid and even just a few weeks ago, I channel surfed and paused on an episode for a few minutes. It was just as a I remembered! From the corny theme (I can fly twice as high!) to LeVar Burton telling me not to take his word for it, I can't picture PBS without Reading Rainbow. How does Boohbah stay on and this gets canceled?!?
Like I said though, I get why this is happening and that's the scary part. As the NPR article points out, Reading Rainbow operated under the assumption that the kids watching already knew how to read. I don't think I need to explain why that's scary and if I do, well ... then you probably can't read this anyway.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
8-29-2009 @ 2:54PM
rainbows are cool said...
This is so sad. Next you'll be telling me they're firing big bird-They're not firing him, are they?
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9-01-2009 @ 12:07PM
discoduderock said...
No, but they've fired Cookie Monster.
8-29-2009 @ 2:45PM
Tim said...
Still blaming the Bush administration for everything.
*yawn*
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8-29-2009 @ 10:42PM
royce said...
I still think it's fair game to blame Bush for things Bush did.
8-29-2009 @ 2:54PM
I remember Reading Rainbow said...
I remember being in the 3rd grade and we would be bourght into a big AV room to watch Reading Rainbow in the middle of the school day(this was back in the early years of the show about 1984) and then afterwards in our classroooms we would put on reports just like the kids on the show about books we had read that week. Yes, the show was for kids who knew how to read already and inspire us to read more, and be more creative. I grew up in a household were books weren't considered important to life, this show kept me excited about reading, and now I write novels.
I'm sad to see it end. I was a kid who loved PBS. I watched RR, 3-2-1 Contact, Vegetable Soup, Sesame Street and The Electric Company, during the day when ever I was sick or it was summer time. Those shows were not only educational but provided a fuel for my curiousity that still burns today, even at my age I still keep learning.
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8-29-2009 @ 2:55PM
Fullman said...
Not buying it. Networks can pump millions upon millions of dollars into a series that they'll only air 4-6 episodes before canceling, but now we'll blame the Bush administration (removed now for 8 months) on this? Please.
If PBS can run a pledge drive to keep shows like this on the air, they can certainly run another one just to keep a staple like 'Reading Rainbow' encourage and inspire children for many more years. It was a part of my childhood, it should be a part of future children's' education.
Has anyone asked LeVar? He might just have another story. Judging by his Twitter feed (twitter.com/levarburton), he's absolutely mum on the topic, instead of talking about stuff not related to his work.
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8-29-2009 @ 2:57PM
Fullman said...
Excuse the slight grammar error on my part. I'm running on 2 hours of sleep during a server migration, heh.
8-29-2009 @ 9:13PM
Samuel McConnell said...
That's because he hasn't had anything to do with the show since it wrapped production in 2006. It's all been reruns since then - that's what's sad about it. Nobody will even pay for the reruns.
I say stick 'em all on Hulu and be done with it.
8-29-2009 @ 2:58PM
miller980 said...
I'm sorry I won't be here 2 billion years from now...just as the Earth is ready to explode, someone somewhere will blame it on George W. Bush.
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8-29-2009 @ 6:43PM
david said...
I arrived here yesterday from the future to examine the post Bush years. Sol exploded 10,000 years ago and yes, it was Bush's fault.
8-29-2009 @ 3:26PM
Fred said...
Not that I'm not sad to see Reading Rainbow go off the air, but the show really ended three years ago, when Burton quit -- he said he was disappointed with the direction its new owners at the time wanted to take the show -- and they quit making episodes. Where was all the internet outrage in 2006?
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8-29-2009 @ 3:42PM
Jeff Harris said...
Truth be told, Congress became Democratic-controlled in 2007, not 2006 (they got elected in 2006, but they didn't get sworn in until 2007). And another thing that might have slipped through the cracks:
Reading Rainbow's financial problems didn't happen in 2009, but rather 2005, and they haven't made a new episode since 2006.
Congress was still Republican-controlled in 2005. The House of Representatives cut $100 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $89 million for network upgrades and satellite technology for the then-upcoming digital television conversion, and ended the Ready To Learn program (which also funded children's programming on public television), causing many stations, including WNED (Reading Rainbow's producer), to have fewer funds than they needed to operate their channels and produce original programming such as Reading Rainbow.
It's not something Toomey just made up. The Bush administration and the 2004 Congress (again, elected in 2004, sworn in in 2005) were largely against public broadcasting because of a perceived bias, and that's a reason behind some of the cuts. And although Reading Rainbow ended as a result of the cuts from 2005, only now are viewers and fans of the show really feeling the effect from those cuts.
Read the following:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/US_Congress_House_panel_OKs_big_cut_in_public_broadcasting_funds
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/10/arts/television/10pbs.html?_r=1
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112312561
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8-29-2009 @ 3:48PM
CCK said...
I did a google search to try and find out who pays for Reading Rainbow, and they were having funding problems all the way back in 2003.
I don't see how the DoE's change in direction is responsible for this problem. PBS, the station and CoPB don't want to pay for it anymore because it costs to much. How is that George Bush's or the DoE's fault? The show is funded by corporations who no longer want to fund it either. I can't find anything that says The DoE pays any money for it.
The truth is this is one Government funded broadcaster using really poor journalism, trying to blame the boogeyman to drum up funding for a cousin's in TV. You'll notice that the AP and other private media outlet's stories on this didn't fall for that crap.
Just remember the source when you read this story.
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8-29-2009 @ 5:27PM
Jeff Harris said...
That's true.
But the series' main sponsors had always been the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the funds provided by viewers courtesy of pledge drives. For its last four years, the grants from the Ready to Learn program (an endeavor from the U.S. Department of Education) also helped in the production. The reason LeVar gave that speech about finding sponsors is because the funds provided by the government were decreased. The reasons there weren't a lot of corporate sponsors as it were in the past because the Ready to Learn grants helped a lot in the production of Reading Rainbow. Corporate sponsors weren't a prominent part of the show's production for its final four seasons. I could understand how they didn't want the series to be more commercialized. Still scratching my head about how McDonald's is a sponsor of Sesame Street.
By the way, there was coverage about the public broadcasting cutbacks in 2005 outside of traditional media from two of the three major international print news organizations, the Associated Press and Reuters.
For example, there's this AP article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111500948_pf.html
and this AP article:
http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2005/05/13/pbs_at_center_of_political_spat/
Most of AP's other articles are pay-per-click on their site. Same thing for Reuters, though I found this Reuters article elsewhere:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/06/17/house_panel_oks_cutting_100m_of_pbs_budget/
Couldn't find anything from the Unification Church-owned UPI about the issue. Wonder why.
I hate politics myself. Both sides are full of crap to tell you the truth.
8-29-2009 @ 3:49PM
MrKMA said...
George W. Bush cancelled your brain.
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8-29-2009 @ 3:51PM
CCK said...
Jeff-
You'll see here that RR had problems before the funding cuts in 2005. It wasn't Bush's fault. The program became to expensive and the private companies that used to fund it no longer wanted to.
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-23750717_ITM
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8-29-2009 @ 4:16PM
Bubbameister33 said...
My favorite episode was when they showed how they made Star Trek:TNG. But you don't have to take my word for it!
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8-29-2009 @ 5:06PM
YouFaceTheTick said...
Shrug. It's TV. TV is not a teaching tool. It's entertainment - nothing more.
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8-29-2009 @ 7:53PM
Miles said...
The History Channel and Discovery Channel say otherwise. Along with the Biography Channel and Military Channel... and C-Span...should I really go on?
8-30-2009 @ 10:09AM
YouFaceTheTick said...
@miles - all the channels you mentioned are extremely entertaining. Entertaining. That's why they have shark week and mythbusters and a gaggle of other shows that are timed to coincide with movie releases and other cultural events. TV is, as Minnow called it long ago, a vast wasteland. Entertaining. That's all.