What accounts for the presence of Lawrence Welk reruns on every public TV station in the country? And I want facts, dammit, not speculation. Somebody who works for a PBS affiliate, please enlighten me.
Move out of your cheesy burg, and you’ll escape the cheesy music. NYC’s PBS Station, WNET, doesn’t carry Mr. Welk reruns. (Though the Long Island affiliate, WLIW, does. Thank God too, cause my Mom loves 'em!)
[Just so there’s no hard feeling – me having insulted your hometown and all – imagine a big, toothy-grin smilie here.]
How about this? When we run pledge drives around Welk they usually do well. The viewers may be small in number, but they make the phones ring.
That part is probably the biggie.
Cost is definitely an item at our place. The Welk programs are not very expensive and are available on a one year contract with the Oklahoma PBS group (we renewed our contract 3 weeks ago).
Thank you - it makes sense. Old people with disposable income.
And stuyguy: I thought Lawrence Welk on PBS was a Columbus, Ohio thing (cheese capital of the world) but when I moved to San Francisco I found he was nationwide. You can call San Francisco many things, but cheesy isn’t one of them.
At the public television station where I am on the board, we feel it is important to provide viewing alternatives that may not exist on commercial or cable outlets in our area. While things that you may not find “cheesy” like MTV’s Tom Green Show, the WWF or Saturday morning cartoons are readily available in our area, big band music is not - so we program Welk.
I should add that it is quite well received. Aparently some people don’t seem to consider it “cheesy”. I guess not everybody is as “cool” as you City Gent.
Any chance they’re calling to say, “Hey! Stop playing Lawrence Welk!” ?
City Gent wrote:
…You can call San Francisco many things, but cheesy isn’t one of them…
Wanna bet?
Cheesy! Cheesy! Cheesy! So there.
Too many bums and 4-way stop signs that aren’t labeled as such. (You can see my thread from about 8 months ago regarding the stop sign thing.)
['nother smilie here]