Too bad we won’t be seeing you anymore, you’ll be missed.

“Reading Rainbow” aired its last episode on PBS last Friday, August 28, 2009. The show hosted by Star Trek’s Levar Burton(Geordi La Forge) has been one of the favorite weekdays shows ends its 26 year run.

According to NPR:
Grant says the funding crunch is partially to blame, but the decision to end Reading Rainbow can also be traced to a shift in the philosophy of educational television programming. The change started with the Department of Education under the Bush administration, he explains, which wanted to see a much heavier focus on the basic tools of reading — like phonics and spelling.

Grant says that [the Public Broadcasting Service], [the Corporation for Public Broadcasting] and the Department of Education put significant funding toward programming that would teach kids how to read — but that’s not what Reading Rainbow was trying to do.

“Reading Rainbow taught kids why to read,” Grant says. “You know, the love of reading — [the show] encouraged kids to pick up a book and to read.”

Imagine That, young viewers won’t find Reading Rainbow on their television sets. “