For Seth MacFarlane, ‘Reading’ Is Fundamental

When LeVar Burton launched a Kickstarter campaign to revive his long-running educational series Reading Rainbow on the web, his target was $1M. Two days later, he had $2M — and the figure has doubled since. Now the man behind Family Guy, Ted and A Million Ways To Die In The West is upping the ante even further. Seth MacFarlane has committed $1M to the project, but it comes in the form of a challenge to the public: He will match every pledge from the $4M mark up to $5M through July 2. Burton plans to produce Reading Rainbow — which he hosted and exec produced during its entire PBS run from 1983-2006 — as a web series and make it available to students nationwide. He said the original $1M goal would have covered free subscriptions for 1,500-plus classrooms, but $6M would make it available for free to 12,500-plus.