Reading Rainbow, a children's reading show hosted by LeVar Burton ended broadcast on Friday, August 28, 2009 due to lack of funding after a 26 year run on PBS. The multi Emmy award-winning show had not produced any new episodes in the past three years due to a $210,000 per episode price tag. Not only was funding support unavailable to renew the show's broadcast rights, through research the Corporation for Public Broadcasting found that a shift in educational television programming had taken place in recent years. Reading Rainbow's concentration was initially based on teaching kids why to read as opposed to teaching them how to read through phonetics and spelling. This recent policy change seems to have smothered the idea of inspiring children to read just for the love of it as well as for the sake of enjoying and understanding storytelling. The affiliated Reading Rainbow website will also cease production in December. The program was popular for use in the classroom setting and will continue to be available for screening in schools.
