Learn to Read

Did You Know?

• On Friday episodes there is a review of the week, and the final program reviews the entire series.
• Every episode except programs 1, 5, 10, 15, and 30 includes a 'Getting Along' segment with either Sylvia Glover or Jim Johnson.
• New York City PBS station WNET was the final PBS member station to air the show, airing it daily before pulling it from its lineup in 2009.

Broadcasts

Initially produced solely at WXYZ-TV in Detroit, Learn To Read was originally offered free to all ABC affiliated television stations by VP/General Manager Jeanne Findlater, who created the idea and wrote the format. She secured underwriting from Chrysler, K-Mart, Kroger, and McDonald's, requiring them to use their commercial time to promote literacy rather than their products. The series was later syndicated to PBS state network Kentucky Educational Television, which marketed it throughout the United States. In the first broadcast, Findlater scheduled the program at 5:30 am and at 10:00 am; the early morning time slot was conceived years earlier by Doug Frazier, then president of the UAW-CIO, who urged Findlater to create a literacy series. Ratings for the early morning slot were not available, but many letters indicated viewers did not want their children to know they could not read. The series was widely used in prisons, and estimates from 2002 placed total viewership at more than 18 million people.