'Idol' Has Seen Enough of Haley

"The War," which has already been completed, will not be altered; the additional material will be added to "the footprint of the series," PBS Senior Vice President John Wilson, who was involved in the talks, told The TV Column.

By that he means the space the program occupies on PBS's schedule, but not the actual program.

The new narrative will be included during the broadcast of the series as well as in the DVD, on the Web site and in educational outreach materials.

PBS President Paula Kerger says the solution was Burns's idea.

"I fully respect an artist's right to tell his story, and frankly, if he did not want to do this, I would not have forced him to do this," she told the Associated Press.

Burns says the campaign by Hispanic organizations to get the additional material into the broadcast "footprint" is "perfectly understandable."

"In a funny way the Second World War is about identity politics," he told The TV Column.

"I think what you begin to understand when you take this tack is, the responses people give [in the documentary] -- crying in their first day of combat, crying remembering their first day of combat -- their responses aren't Japanese American or Irish American or Hispanic American. . . . They're human."

The concerns over the project, he said, have been raised mostly by people "who haven't seen a single frame of the film."

Burns calls the controversy and ensuing press coverage a "win-win situation."

"In the end this is not distracting -- it's pointing a big neon sign saying: This is coming down the pike."

Burns says he embraces all those Big Neon Signs. Like when the press wrote articles about how dumb PBS was to have tentatively scheduled the debut of "The War" on the same night as the Primetime Emmy Awards (it's been moved one week).

Likewise, articles wondering whether adult language uttered by soldiers will cause viewers to file complaints and provoke the Federal Communications Commission, which has deemed the words to be obscene, to issue hefty fines against PBS stations broadcasting "The War."

Burns called that issue a "non-starter."

" 'Saving Private Ryan' . . . has a dozen uses of the f-word and nothing happened," Burns said of ABC's 2004 broadcast of the Tom Hanks flick.

"This is a documentary in which there are three instances in 14 1/2 hours of questionable language."

Burns added: "You know what's obscene -- war is obscene."