Bonanza Season

The Cartwright's thousand-square-mile Ponderosa Ranch is located near Virginia City Nevada site of the Comstock Silver Lode during and after the Civil War. Each of the sons was born to a different wife of Ben's; none of the mothers is still alive. Adventures are typical western ones with lots of personal relationships/problems thrown in as well.
Bonanza DVD is an American western television series that ran on NBC from September 12 1959 to January 16 1973. Lasting 14 seasons and 430 episodes it ranks as the second longest running western series (behind Gunsmoke)and stills continues to air in syndication.
At the risk of hampering my reputation as a so-called television historian (insert eye-roll here), I must admit that I have never watched an episode of Bonanza beginning to end. At least I don't think I have. It used to run occasionally on Sunday afternoons as filler on KXLY Spokane when I was a child and I may have sat through a full episode then... but now come to think of it... that was Gunsmoke. Nevermind.
I picked up a bargain bin DVD a few years back of Bonanza season dvd boxset as a handful of episodes are in the public domain. I was instantly jarred and disappointed when the theme song, certainly not in the public domain, had been dubbed over with some generic synthesized surf music. I shut it off, disillusioned by the whole venture.