TIGER WOODS - KEN BURNS LOSES PRINCIPAL BACKER GM

KEN BURNS LOSES PRINCIPAL BACKER GM

Having already cut its ties to Tiger Woods, General Motors will now stop funding Ken Burns, the PBS documentary maker, the Detroit News reported today (Monday). GM is facing the worst financial crunch in its history and is slashing marketing costs. It has put up 35 percent of the budget for each of Burns's films and also funded PBS's school programs tied to them, the newspaper said. A spokesman for Burns told the News that Burns "is incredibly thankful for what they've done. As a partner, they have allowed him to tell many stories about American life that would either not have been told or told in a different way. It was an extraordinary contribution to public television." Said a GM spokesman "We've been proud to be associated with Ken's work over the years, as he is certainly the 'gold standard' of documentary filmmaking. ... But the company's financial crisis has forced GM to rein in such spending."

09/03/2009