In the meantime, Welk - who died in 1992 at age 89 - made pit stops at the (World's Only) Corn Palace in Mitchell and to visit his favorite pen pal, Edna Stoner, in Beresford, South Dakota.Īnd his legacy still sings in the Rushmore State.Ī show program for the 1969 Corn Palace Festival featuring Lawrence Welk's orchestra, which played 15 shows over a week's time. Since 1986, Welk's variety show, featuring the Lennon Sisters, the Irish tenor Joe Feeney and accordionist Myron Floren, have played on South Dakota Public Broadcasting via syndication. Since then, for nearly a century, Welk has been broadcast in one form or another - on a national radio show out of Pittsburgh and Chicago, then, beginning in 1955, on ABC out of Los Angeles. That next morning he first broadcast over the airwaves of WNAX, a massive radio station stretching the eastern width of the state. In the 1920s, the ambitious, clear-eyed son of German immigrants drove down from Bismarck on a frigid night looking for New Orleans, but pulled off with his freezing band at a hotel in Yankton, South Dakota. While Welk was a North Dakota native (born in Strasburg), the celebrated "champagne music" maker cut his chops one state to the south, according to his 1971 memoir. "What we've seen in the ratings has been a trendline downward," Miller acknowledged. But station officials say that number has dropped off over the last five years, especially over the last year as the pandemic has sent more viewers to digital spaces. Just a few years ago Welk drew big audiences for the public station unaccustomed to blockbuster viewership, says Miller. Still, there's also a sense in South Dakota that, for whatever reason, the viewers - always at the top end of the plus-65 demographic - just aren't there anymore.
0 kommentar(er)
