Thank you, E. Thorp, for the comments and suggestions.
Since the Ken Burns effort was at least in the direction of exposing jazz history to viewers who might have had no previous experience with it, nor even with the music, I can agree that it was much better than nothing.
Your attitude of appreciating what was there instead of noticing what wasn’t is commendable. I was in a mixed frame of mind. I felt way too much time was spent on the few giants and way too little on some of the others who also contributed a great deal, and who continue to. The absence of anything definitive on the past two or three decades troubled me.
If you take the position that this series was a Jazz 101 course for people (like Burns) who aren’t already into the music, then it’s hard to justify just dropping the subject when the major shifts that are with us today (fusion, avant garde, smooth, world, name others) are what most casual listeners are apt to hear.
That said, I did rewatch several episodes that were shown here in the past month and found my attitude has shifted more to the one you have/had. It has a lot of good stuff, and helps make some continuity of the many liner notes, books and other written histories. The pictures and tune selections do give a flavor of the music.
There’s nothing to stop any of you who have read/posted on this thread from kicking off a new one or two.
In fact, there are some current threads in this vein already.