Wait, the Reading Rainbow was still on the air?

The Reading Rainbow has been cancelled.

After 26 years.

Twenty-six.

“I think reading is part of the birthright of the human being,” LeVar Burton said in a 2003 interview. “It’s just such an integral part of the human experience — that connection with the written word.”

I would post an actual press release, but it has too many words and I can’t find the motivation to read it.

If only there was a t.v. show on to get me excited about reading…

Fuck you Bush administration¹ you never cease to stick it to us, do you?

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1. “The show’s run is ending, Grant explains, because no one — not the station, not PBS, not the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — will put up the several hundred thousand dollars needed to renew the show’s broadcast rights.

   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.”[back]