The children’s television program Reading Rainbow ends its 26-year run today, and that makes me rather angry.

Like most people my age, I grew up watching Reading Rainbow alongside luminaries such as Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. While the former is still going strong, and the latter had no choice but to stop due to Rogers’ passing away, Reading Rainbow spent over a decade foundering. I don’t know if it was due to kids not reading as much anymore, loss of funding, or some other factor, but the program’s passing is aggravating. Reading Rainbow was a fantastic show; you watched it, too, and you’re a lying scumbag if you claim otherwise. There’s no shame in admitting it, so grow up.

The amount of Reading Rainbow episodes produced per year dropped like a stone over the last decade or two. Host LeVar Burton finally left due to creative differences with the owners, but we can only speculate as to what those differences might have been. My guess? The powers-that-be wanted to revamp the show to make it more appealing to the Internet generation, while Burton is still a staunch supporter of getting off your ass and going to the library to read a real book. I definitely side with Burton on that; more people go to the library these days for free Internet access than to get books!

It sucks to see such a great program as Reading Rainbow go down the toilet after all these years. Kids nowadays don’t know what they’re missing, and even worse, I doubt they care, as they’re too busy texting each other and wasting time on Facebook. That’s likely the extent of their “leisure reading”…

…but you don’t have to take my word for it.