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There are no Lawrence Welk DVDs

I imagine music rights, plus negotiating rights with the performers (or their estates) would be a factor, and would enough copies even be sold?
 
PBS has been broadcasting the show for years. As I recall the estate granted the masters to PBS. They often offer DVD collections as premiums to people who donate certain amounts to PBS. A lot of those collections then end up on Amazon, eBay, and Etsy.
 
95% of Welk's fanbase is dead. He was a star for the Doughboy and early WW2/Korean War generations. Especially the former. IIRC, the last WW1 veteran died a decade ago.
 
My in-laws were on the extreme low end of Lawrence Welk's audience and yesterday would've been his 91st birthday. My parents are more in line with the age spread and my mother would have turned 108 on February 26th. She's only been gone for five years!
 
semoochie said:
My in-laws were on the extreme low end of Lawrence Welk's audience and yesterday would've been his 91st birthday. My parents are more in line with the age spread and my mother would have turned 108 on February 26th. She's only been gone for five years!
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My mother was born in 1930. Welk was what her mother and father watched in the '50s and '60s, she hated that old-fogey music.
 
Amazingly enough, Welk still has an audience on PBS. The audience that watched those episodes new are very old or not with us. There must be a "camp" factor....like seeing the well-scrubbed young couple singing "One Toke Over the Line".
 
My in-laws were on the extreme low end of Lawrence Welk's audience and yesterday would've been his 91st birthday.
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And at the extreme extreme low end of the audience are my boomer parents (mid-60s) and I (30-something) who watched/listened to the programme most saturdays throughout the 80s/90s/2000s via Only Portland Broadcasting. I assure you there's still a younger contingent (albeit a small one) who would watch were it on today. Lawrence Welk on channel 10 was just as much a part of my childhood as The Price is Right, Watkins AM Only, the Fort Vancouver playground and seeing films at the Tom Moyer Cascade Park 4 cinema!
 
When I was just starting out in public broadcasting in the mid-2000s, one of my first pledge drive tasks was to do the pitching during Welk. I called up my grandmother, who was well into her 90s by then, thinking she'd be excited to see me during the show.

"Lawrence Welk? That's for OLD PEOPLE. I don't watch that."

(She was almost 95 when she died a few years later, and that's already 11 years ago.)
 
According to this, the Lawrence Welk Show is the "highest rated syndicated series on public television."

The Lawrence Welk Show

The Lawrence Welk Show airs each week on 279 public television stations nationally and is seen by more than three million people each week.
www.oeta.tv www.oeta.tv
 
oldradiotapes said:
And at the extreme extreme low end of the audience are my boomer parents (mid-60s) and I (30-something) who watched/listened to the programme most saturdays throughout the 80s/90s/2000s via Only Portland Broadcasting. I assure you there's still a younger contingent (albeit a small one) who would watch were it on today. Lawrence Welk on channel 10 was just as much a part of my childhood as The Price is Right, Watkins AM Only, the Fort Vancouver playground and seeing films at the Tom Moyer Cascade Park 4 cinema!
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I was born 5 days into the Boomer generation, and nothing about the Welk show ever had any appeal and it was a source of parody and sarcastic remarks among school friends. "What would you know, you probably watch Lawrence Welk" was a rather common way of telling an older person they were not hip and cool.

Since my "hometown" was also the one of "Wierd" Al Yankovic's polka-star father and his band, that sort of music was very much the mark of anyone who was an "old f--t".
 
DavidEduardo said:
Since my "hometown" was also the one of "Wierd" Al Yankovic's polka-star father and his band, that sort of music was very much the mark of anyone who was an "old f--t".
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Polka star Frankie Yankovic was from Cleveland, but was not Weird Al's father. In fact, they are not related. Al's father was Nick Yankovic, who was originally from Kansas City, and not a musician AFAIK.
 
I've seen a few older Welk shows pop up on public domain DVDs. But there's a good chance the ones that Mikey posted are either PD or bootleg going by what else is available on that website.
 
anotherguy said:
I've seen a few older Welk shows pop up on public domain DVDs. But there's a good chance the ones that Mikey posted are either PD or bootleg going by what else is available on that website.
Click to expand...

That reminds me, if the OP is looking for DVDs, why not simply record the show every week off PBS? It's available there free of charge. Just hit "record." Presto.
 
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