Very Impressive Viewer Numbers for the Ken Burns Country Film
We knew the 8-episode, 16 1/2-hour Ken Burns documentary on country music that aired in mid September on PBS would have a significant impact and reach millions of viewers due to the popularity and prestige Ken Burns enjoys. We already knew that some of the artists featured saw a boost in sales after they were featured in the film. Now we have the final tabulations on how many total viewers the documentary reached, and they’re quite impressive.
Country Music by Ken Burns drew an impressive 34.5 million unique viewers during the documentary’s eight night run according to Nielsen, averaging an audience of 6.8 million each night, and an average household rating of 4.4 over the period. Furthermore, an additional 4 million viewers streamed the series online during the time period. The series also racked up almost 1.5 million engagements on social media across Facebook and Twitter.
How does this stack up to other Ken Burns documentaries? His 2017 film The Vietnam War reached an average of 6.7 million viewers a night, and 34 million total viewers, so just slightly below where Country Music came in. This means that Country Music was the most-viewed Ken Burns documentary in the last 20 years when considering total viewers. The 2014 film The Roosevelts had a higher average of nightly viewers with 11.7 million, but only had a total of 33.3 million viewers over the 7 episodes.
“We couldn’t be happier with the audience we reached with ‘Country Music,’” says Burns. “We were fortunate to travel across the country to towns large and small to discuss this film and this history, and in each, we were met with new stories about the power of music. The PBS stations in just about every market helped us engage a public that rightly sees this music as their heritage.”
Through this large audience, country music has seen a sizable re-engagement from fans with many of the older artists featured on the program. Country Music helped reset and define what country music is. Even people who were disappointed in the documentary for one reason or another still watched intently. An article posted on Saving Country Music about the names the documentary overlooked has now received nearly 800 comments and counting—the most comments left on any SCM article in over 11 years.
If you missed the documentary, Country Music can still be streamed online. Episodes will also re-air in Friday nights at 9:00 pm Eastern, 8:00 pm Central starting January 3rd, and running through February 21st, 2020.
November 11, 2019 @ 1:57 pm
This shouldn’t start another thread about who was in the doc and who was left out and who received too much attention. We have commented on other posts ad nauseum. The fact is the accomplishment of getting this doc out to the masses, some of who were no doubt not as familiar with the genre of country music and those who may be casual listeners with little historical knowledge. Overall a job well done.
November 11, 2019 @ 2:47 pm
A note to UK viewers: this series will be broadcast on BBC4 starting Friday November 22 2019. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000bhfw
November 11, 2019 @ 3:55 pm
Thanks for the heads up durks. Been feeling bad for all those overseas viewers who have been unable to access this.
November 12, 2019 @ 8:04 pm
Hey Trigger, do you know where Canadian viewers can stream the documentary?
November 12, 2019 @ 8:27 pm
I really wish I could help but I just don’t have that information. Right before it aired I wanted to put together an international viewing guide, and basically found out it wasn’t going to be available anywhere. If at some point it gets worldwide distribution, I’ll try to let folks know. I feel everyone’s frustrations you can’t watch the film.
December 15, 2019 @ 4:05 am
As an addendum to my post above: the version of this series which has been shown here in the UK (we are now almost at the end of the run) is an ‘international edit’ which is about half the total length of the version shown in the US. There are very obvious omissions in it, and some of the editing is noticeably abrupt.
I do not know why the decision was taken to produce such an edit rather than just broadcast the entire series in its original form, and I am rather disappointed that this has been done: at some stage I hope to be able to view the full original version. Nevertheless, I have enjoyed watching the series as it’s been shown here.
November 11, 2019 @ 4:06 pm
Are the episodes no longer available to stream for free? It looks like you have to become a member? I was able to stream most of them for free but didn’t finish it.
November 11, 2019 @ 6:19 pm
I think it’s now on Amazon Prime if you have that…
November 11, 2019 @ 8:15 pm
It’s is not. It’s a “How do I watch this.”
November 12, 2019 @ 8:15 pm
Or the torrent sites.
November 11, 2019 @ 7:47 pm
Despite it’s flaws or over sights, I LOVE this documentary. It’s fair to say that Ken Burns one idea when he started the series, and as subjects were interviewed and issues explored, things changed along the way until he had a lot of material that had to put together in a cohesive manner. This series could have gone on for several more hours, and someone or something would still be left out. I am grateful for the effort put into presenting a historical record of country music that can reach a worldwide audience. THANK YOU Ken Burns for this work of art.
November 12, 2019 @ 1:05 am
i thought the whole thing was excellent but the extras were my favorite part. i already knew most of the other stuff in it.but the bonus footage asked a lot of great questions and had a bunch of little stories that kinda didn’t fit but were still fascinating.
November 12, 2019 @ 7:20 am
It still blows my mind that one of the best documentarians made a 16 hour doc about Country Music and there is a contingency whose major complaint was “it wasn’t detailed enough”…some people can’t be happy.
November 13, 2019 @ 8:19 am
At the risk of losing my bona fides, I learned more than I had expected.
November 12, 2019 @ 7:56 am
Great series. Great for country music, too.
November 12, 2019 @ 10:16 am
I also thought it was a wonderful documentary. Opened a lot of eyes to the history, connections,and importance of country music. I read Bill Malone’s Country Music USA 50th anniversary edition before the series and the two really connected all the history.
I only wish he could have continued it through the last few years. The book did, but that additional segment was obviously written by a co-author and was not as detailed or well written as the rest of the book.
It also helped me to download and buy country music from the 40’s and 50’s. It made so appreciated the Maddox Brothers and Rose who I never knew about.
But definitely a monumental program and experience!
November 12, 2019 @ 11:00 am
If you haven’t heard Marc Maron proselytize about this series it is funny and touching. As a self-described “blues guy” Maron saw country music and kind a foreign language over there that he knew he probably needed to know about but could never get in. And The documentary introduced him to “a whole new set of wizards”. He immediately went out and bout a bunch of Carter family records while on the road.
I find country music to be one of the most maligned genres by those who don’t listen to it or who have only heard a few songs (usually real twangy or the pop side of Dolly Parton). But from Maron response and the response of others it is my belief that may bridge some larger gaps (larger the music. Within the culture for those who are paying attention to the stories and messages here.
November 12, 2019 @ 11:17 am
Genuine question: why is this considered a ‘film’ and not a ‘series’? It’s an eight-parter, after all.
November 14, 2019 @ 12:54 pm
Its sad that we are not allowed to view the documentary here in Europe, it looks awesome.