(via squashed)

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.

I feel old and sad. Is there really no longer room for a show that teaches kids to love books?

There will be no butterfly in the sky. LeVar Burton will not go twice as high. George Bush killed Reading Rainbow.