Take a look. It's in a book. Scratch that. It's streaming on your phone.
"Reading Rainbow," the beloved children's program hosted by LeVar Burton, ran for an astounding 21 seasons.
The show debuted in 1983 as a way to encourage kids to read. It aired for 23 years before ending its run in 2006.
In that time, the show received tremendous critical acclaim, earning 26 Daytime Emmys and a Peabody Award. Not to mention the love and adoration of an entire generation of children and their parents.
Burton after his Daytime Emmy award in 2002. Photo by Mark Mainz/Getty Images .
The show's been off the air since 2009, but snag a juice box and get comfy because "Reading Rainbow" is coming back ... to Netflix!
READING RAINBOW will be coming to @NETFLIX on Aug. 1st!! Who
A select volume of episodes of the iconic TV show will arrive on the popular streaming service Aug. 1, 2015.
And there's more where that came from. Brand new episodes of "Reading Rainbow" are on the way, too.
In 2014, Burton started a Kickstarter campaign to produce new episodes of the show.
He launched the campaign with a goal of raising $1 million, and he did it — in 11 HOURS!
LeVar Burton
Since surpassing the campaign's stretch goal of $5 million, Burton's been hard at work shooting more content for the new "Reading Rainbow" and its companion app. While the new episodes won't be available on Netflix, Burton hopes to make the content available on mobile devices, set-top boxes, and gaming consoles.
These kids aren't watching "Reading Rainbow" ... yet. Burton hopes to deliver new episodes of the show to mobile devices and gaming consoles. Photo by Francois Guillot//AFP/Getty Images.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Burton shared his excitement about delivering the new episodes of the show in an interactive format.
"I have to say, as a fan of technology, I guess I've always thought counterintuitively about this because with Reading Rainbow the television series, the debate 31 years ago — when we first began this journey — was: Is television the enemy of education? And I thought, here in television lies a great assist and a great ally in educating our kids. I feel the same way about the current digital media. I think that this is a tremendous opportunity for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that these gadgets that we all carry around are so engaging. We want to spend time on them, we want to interact with them, and that interaction is something television does not offer. So I'm really excited about the potential for technology being a great tool in the education process."
There's no premiere date for the new episodes of "Reading Rainbow" yet, but we're just days away from the familiar favorites on Netflix.
Not to mention, one of the best theme songs of all time. Yeah, I said it.
Sing it with me,"Butterfly in the skyyyyyyyyy, I can go twice as highhhhhhhh."
Check out the "Reading Rainbow" website to stay up to date on your favorite educational TV show. Thumbnail photo by Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for Fast Company.
No comments:
Post a Comment