As we've heard, the House is moving to revoke a billion dollars in already approved funding

for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the entity that steers taxpayer funds to PBS, NPR,

and public media stations. To talk about the potential impact on PBS, we turn to one of this

network's most acclaimed and most watched filmmakers and directors,

Ken Burns. The Ken Burns collection on PBS includes more than 40 documentaries on a wide range

of subjects, including the Civil War, Baseball, Vietnam, and country music. His new documentary

series, The American Revolution,

is scheduled to premiere on PBS in November.

Ken Burns, so good to have you on the program.

The federal government, as you well know, has for

over five decades supported through CPB public media.

That very much looks likely to end starting tomorrow.

As someone whose work is so central to this network, how is this news sitting with you?

Well, not very well. I think we're all in a bit of a state of a shock

and also sort of reeling at the short-sightedness of it all.

This is such an American institution trusted by people across political divides, geographic

divides, age groups.

And what's so short-sighted about it, I think, is that this affects mostly rural communities or the hardest hit.

My own films probably get somewhere around 20% of any given budget from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

That's a significant hit. We'll scramble. We'll have to make it up.

I'm confident that with the extra work,

it will happen. But it's those projects at the national level that might get 50 or 60, maybe

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