In addition to building cars, General Motors has long been involved with non-automotive endeavors, typically corporate sponsorships of the arts. But with the automaker’s cash levels reaching perilous lows, it has been forced to cut back heavily – most recently by pulling its funding for PBS documentary filmmaker Ken Burns.
GM will not renew a 10-year deal with Burns, despite the general success of the filmmaker’s award-winning programs.
“We’ve been proud to be associated with Ken’s work over the years, as he is certainly the ‘gold standard’ of documentary filmmaking,” GM’s Kelly Cusinato told the Detroit News. “But the company’s financial crisis has forced GM to rein in such spending.”
GM had underwritten 35 percent of Burns’ films for 10 years, but his six-part series set to debut this coming fall on PBS on the National Park System will be the last funded by the automaker.
The automaker and Burns’ production company, Florentine Films, had agreed to produce one film each year together. GM’s funding, an amount the automaker has not released, went towards production, marketing and educational programs.
