Seth McFarlane makes $1 million pledge to 'Reading Rainbow'

May 15, 2014. Director and cast member Seth MacFarlane poses at the premiere of "A Million Ways to Die in the West" in Los Angeles, California. (Reuters)

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 reports Deadline.com.

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.