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Lawrence Welk reruns on PBS affiliates nearing the end?

"And now, before we take you to Lowell Thomas and the News, here's Mantovani and his orchestra with In-a-gadda-da-vida." :D

A bit off topic but Mantovani was a short running joke in Clint Eastwood's radio dj thriller "Play Misty For Me" (1971). One of the best radio movies of all time, IMO.
 
"Lawrence Welk? That's for OLD people!"

She was 90 when I started working at the station and was almost 95 when she died ten years ago.

Baby Boomers like to say the same thing about the Tridentine Mass resurgence.

Ironically his Wikipedia page says that he was a devout Catholic and communicated (took communion) every day.

The availability of the old mass has doubled in the last 20 years, thanks to the FSSP and ICKSP. Millennials are actually driving the growth on this one!
 
I haven't seen Lawrence Welk on my PBS station in at least 6-8 years. The problem is their current age bracket. Average age of a Welk viewer is what...87 years old now? Half of the audience has gone up to the great venue in the sky. They were all alive in the 1980s and 1990s. Not today.


Surprisingly; Lawrence Welk Show still runs every Saturday afternoon at 5PM on Maine Public Television, where we have a substantial "older" audience. I think a lot of the viewers are over across the border in Canada, where Maine Public Television is the PBS feed for New Brunswick cable and satellite providers. It has been on for at least the past 20 years, since I moved back here to Maine.
 
Mississippi Public Broadcasting now airs Bill Gaither Classic Gospel. (homecoming tapes) instead of Lawrence Welk. My Grandmother watched Lawerence Welk religously. She tortured me every saturday with it. My mother also watched the PBS reruns. As I've gotten older my musical taste have changed and I can appreciate Lawrence Welk for what it was. Just good clean music and nothing offensive. I never cared much for the singing but the band had some very good musicians in it and could play just about anything. I later joined the school band and played the trumpet myself and began to take notice of how well they always Played I wish Lawrence Welk had let them do more band numbers like they did on the B/W episodes instead of having to let so many singers have their segment every week. They would have been better off doing songs that fit the big band or easy style of the show instead of doing schmaltzy cover versions of pop songs. Whenever they did some actual original or "band" style music they couldn't be beat. I hated the show as a kid, but looking back I would give anything to sit in front of the TV with my dearly departed grandmother and watch it with her just one more time. And if it made Maw-Maw happy, then I was happy.
 
Doesn't PBS have rules against religious shows on it's stations?

A pure preaching show would certainly seem out of place on a PBS station, but I'm not sure there's any actual rule. While southern gospel music does contain lyrics that promote the Protestant version of Christianity, music in general falls under the category of the arts and, as such, is a good fit for PBS. I'd be surprised if PBS hasn't shown performances of Handel's "Messiah" or Bach's "Christmas Oratorio" as holiday programming at some point, and any special it may do on Aretha Franklin (if it hasn't already) would have to include clips of her singing gospel music.
 
Doesn't PBS have rules against religious shows on it's stations?

I'm sure they don't. That would be the quickest way to end public funding once and for all, because religion in all forms makes up a significant part of the lives of the public. Only a small minority of people are irreligious. Elected officials know that and would consider it political suicide to allow public funding for an operation that prohibited such an important part of people's lives. There's already a strong push to eliminate public funding for PBS due to a perception of bias against Christianity.
 
Only a small minority of people are irreligious.
23.1% is a pretty big small minority:

https://religionnews.com/2019/03/21/nones-now-as-big-as-evangelicals-catholics-in-the-us/

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23.1% is a pretty big small minority:

It's sort of like a football game ending 7 to 28. That would be called an "smashing loss".

And that 23% consists of not only atheists and agnostics, but many people of faith who are not participants in organized religion.

One of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, was a Deist yet he believed in opening the sessions of the Constitutional Convention with a prayer.
 


One of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, was a Deist yet he believed in opening the sessions of the Constitutional Convention with a prayer.

Just in case.

I've been at events that have started with prayers of denominations or faiths other than my own and still bow my head. Hedging my bet on the afterlife!

So why do Jews get their own line on that chart while all other non-Christians are lumped together as "other"? I'd imagine there are more Muslims in this country than Jews by now, maybe even more Hindus?
 
A pure preaching show would certainly seem out of place on a PBS station, but I'm not sure there's any actual rule. While southern gospel music does contain lyrics that promote the Protestant version of Christianity, music in general falls under the category of the arts and, as such, is a good fit for PBS. I'd be surprised if PBS hasn't shown performances of Handel's "Messiah" or Bach's "Christmas Oratorio" as holiday programming at some point, and any special it may do on Aretha Franklin (if it hasn't already) would have to include clips of her singing gospel music.

A PBS affiliate can air anything but full-blown commercials. All they need is to do is pay the various programming and affiliate fees.
 
Gospel music is still an American art form, and there's no reason it can't be on PBS. The Ken Burns Country Music series necessarily included the influence of the church on the music and artists. Atheism isn't the state religion either.
 
Gospel music is still an American art form, and there's no reason it can't be on PBS. The Ken Burns Country Music series necessarily included the influence of the church on the music and artists. Atheism isn't the state religion either.

Ummm, there is NO state religion.
 
There's already a strong push to eliminate public funding for PBS due to a perception of bias against Christianity.

Huh? There's no "strong push" and there's no "bias against Christianity." Funding has been passed every year without any debate.

There have been numerous documentaries on the history of Christianity on PBS.
 
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