brilliant.

[acroyear]

Ken Burns - Public broadcasting, a 'luxury' we can't do without:

Many say that what can't survive in the marketplace doesn't deserve to survive. Not one of my documentaries, produced solely for PBS over the past 30 years, could have been made anywhere but on public broadcasting. Each time a film of mine happens to reach a large audience, I am "invited" to join the marketplace. Each time I patiently explain to my new suitor what I have planned for my next project - an 11-and-a-half-hour history of the Civil War, perhaps, or a 17-hour investigation of the history of jazz, or a 12-hour history of the national parks - I am laughed out of their offices, sent, happily, back to PBS.

The marketplace can be wonderful. Its relentless forces do weed out many unnecessary things, but there are some things the marketplace cannot do. It won't come to your house at 3 in the morning if it's on fire, it doesn't plow the streets in a blizzard and it doesn't have boots on the ground in Afghanistan. I don't mean to suggest that PBS or the endowments have a direct role in the defense of our country; no, they help make the country worth defending.