Country fans have known for years that Ken Burns has had plans to release a documentary about their favorite music genre. Now, PBS announced that production for the documentary was on and the dates for its release were confirmed as September 15-25.
PBS broke the news at the Television Critics Association conference in Pasadena, confirming that the documentary will be 16 and a half hours long. Like many of Burns’ documentaries, Country Music will feature actual live footage of performances done in the last few decades.
Burns also confirmed that the documentary will limit its number of on-screen historians and allow only one scholarly author, Bill Malone. A big reason for that is because most of the country artists featured have been in the business for long and know about the genre’s history pretty well.
“We made it clear to some of the people who appear in our film as commentators—like Dierks Bentley, Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show and Rhiannon Giddenns—that they’re too damn young for us to cover their career,” Dayton Duncan, a writer and producer in the film, said.
In total, 101 country artists were filmed, including 40 Half of Famers and 17 who’ve already passed away.
