Remembering Reading Rainbow

My friend Judy H. sent me a note yesterday with a link(below) to a review of Reading Rainbow on AOL Shopping.  As most of you know, Reading Rainbow has been a life work for both me and Cecily.  PBS is not renewing the broadcast rights for the show effective this month, so for the first time in 26 years, Reading Rainbow will not be on the air somewhere.  I thought this would be a good time to share my personal thoughts about this wonderful experience we had.  Television production is a team sport, and location production, especially, requires the talents of so many people.  I can't say enough about the extraordinary staff we had at Lancit Media and how we all lived this dream together.  Hope you all enjoy--

Butterfly in the Sky……

Reading Rainbow is the essence of what I am as a person.  That’s a big statement, but one that really does sum up what my life has been about.  I am imbued with the “Reading Rainbow Karma”.  All of us on the production team of Reading Rainbow used to joke about it for all the years we worked on the show.  It always seemed like this idea, this series, was blessed by some force that would not let it fail.  No matter what production challenge (and there were many!) rose to meet us, we always prevailed.

But the ‘essence’ I speak of is more than just a feeling.  It is a way of looking at the world.  It is a method for approaching and living life.  I think that all the good fortune that blessed the series was a result of the way all of us who made this program gave to it unselfishly.  Money was not the issue—it was about doing something that really impacted children—that made a difference in their world.  We all somehow knew that to be the case.  We knew it was ‘big’,  which is why we accomplished remarkable things.

Back in 1982 when someone from Great Plains National ITV Library and WNED in Buffalo, NY approached Cecily Truett and me looking for producers to come up with a concept for a new show that would encourage kids to read over the summer months, we had no idea what our idea would become.  We frankly didn’t have a clue how we were going to do it!  (We were trying to pay the rent, and the fee we earned creating the pilot was enough for a few months rent on our New York apartment!)

But during the following 21 years we lived a dream.  What we created left an enduring imprint on the minds of children from several generations. 

As I read of the series’ passage into history, I just want to raise my hand and say that what this series has been for all that time is something appreciated most by it’s audience.  It is the children who watched, and learned, and learned to love to read that gave this idea its legs. 

Our audience, (including the parents of our audience) loved this program—unreservedly!  Reading Rainbow and Lancit Media won every award there was, both domestic and international!  During our tenure as producers of the show, we garnered 17 EMMY awards, 7 for Best Children’s Series.

But more important than any of the awards was what happened to children out there in TV Land.  They started to read!  We watched the sale of Reading Rainbow books rise over 1000% in some cases as kids and their parents rushed to the bookstores to get their hands on the books.

It was a simple concept really—we endeavored to provide a real world context for children from what they could read in a book.  In the process of analyzing every book we featured, we had to find ways to make the essence of what children were reading about real—in a way we could show them and they could see and understand.  It required all of us to think like a 6 year old.  We had to see the world through 6-year-old eyes.  Sounds easy and obvious, I know, but believe me it isn’t.  The wonderful thing was that the people who came together to make these programs were able to do that effortlessly.  That was what was so exciting about doing this work.  For 25 years, we lived the lyrics of our theme song: “I can go anywhere, I can do anything”.  That was the mantra that we always held above all else, and it was the overarching theme that we tried to imbue into our audience’s minds. 

I found as I directed these episodes that I needed to see the world as a 6 year old wanted to see it.  I was always fascinated by the fact that whatever wide shot we started with—an aerial view of the desert; a wide shot of the harbor, a wide shot of a marketplace—we could always zero in on the beauty and wonder of extreme close ups that would reveal the claws of the gila monster, or the way the coils of tugboat ropes were made, or the surface patterns on an onion.  Doing that kind of exercise with everything that I looked at in my life changed me.  I felt this tremendous responsibility to communicate these things to eyes that had never seen them before…to somehow reveal the world to these fresh minds that were so open to anything I wanted to show them.  It was exhilarating as a professional to have that opportunity.  It made me a more aware person.

The real payoff and treasure was in the joy of discovery!  We got to be 6 years old all over again.  For 25 years we got to take field trips everywhere and meet the most remarkable people.  It was a privilege to be able to reach our audience.  Just ask anyone today under the age of 40 if they know the Reading Rainbow theme and more than likely they will break into the simple melody that signaled the embarkation on a journey every day for them as kids as they watched the show.  That , my friends, is REAL media power!

Remembering Reading Rainbow