which Welk appeared with the "musical family" and his grandchildren on Christmas Eve at Lawrence Welk's home. In March 1987, the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority produced and released a documentary film, Lawrence Welk: Television's Music Man, hosted by Kathy Lennon of The Lennon Sisters. The film was a retrospective on Welk's life and career, featuring interviews with surviving members of Welk's "musical family", and scenes from the show; it was part of a new approach to pledge drive programming that aimed to lure donors with popular music and nostalgia, an approach that has since become standard at other public television stations. The film was so successful that the OETA acquired rerun rights to the program and began offering them to stations nationwide that October. Welk's segments from Memories with Lawrence Welk were used until his death, after which select members of the "musical family" took over as hosts. Reruns continue to air to this day (in many markets airing on Saturday nights at 7 pm, the same time the show aired during the latter years of its original run), with new and updated interviews with surviving cast members. The shows are occasionally "recut" and interspersed with segments from other episodes for time and diversity purposes; for example, a rebroadcast of Gail Farrell's 1969 debut featured an added song by Anacani, who did not join the show until 1973. Nielsen ratings The show was most highly rated during the mid to late 1960's and was a top 30 hit for five seasons, according to ClassicTVHits.com's ratings database. 1964–65: No. 30 (22.00 rating) 1965–66: No. 19 (22.40 rating) 1966–67: No. 12 (22.79 rating) 1967–68: No. 17 (21.90 rating) 1968–69: No. 29 (20.50 rating) Format The show would often open by showing bubbles floating around and was accompanied by a sound effect of a bottle of champagne opening, including the opening theme (originally "Bubbles in the Wine", composed by Welk and Frank Loesser, later replaced with a derivative theme, "Champagne Time", and fanfare composed by George Cates). Each week, Welk would introduce the theme of the show, which usually inspired joyous singing and/or patriotic fervor. He was most known for delivering these monologues in a distinctive German accent (this despite being born and raised in North Dakota), which was parodied in popular culture (even by Welk himself: the two books he authored, Wunnerful, Wunnerful! and Ah-One, Ah-Two! were so titled because they were