The Judy Garland Show is an American musical variety television series that aired on CBS on Sunday nights during the 1963-1964 television season. Despite a sometimes stormy relationship with Judy Garland, CBS had found success with several television specials featuring the star. Garland, who for years had been reluctant to commit to a weekly series, saw the show as her best chance to pull herself out of severe financial difficulties.Production difficulties beset the series almost from the beginning. The series had three different producers in the course of its 26 episodes and went through a number of other key personnel changes. With the change in producers also came changes to the show's format, which started as comedy/variety but switched to an almost purely concert format.While Garland herself was popular with critics, the initial variety format and her co-star, Jerry Van Dyke, were not. The show competed with Bonanza, then the fourth most popular program on television, and consistently performed poorly in the ratings. Although fans rallied in an attempt to save the show, CBS cancelled it after a single season.TV Guide included the series in their 2013 list of 60 shows that were "Cancelled Too Soon".
The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour is an American variety show starring American pop-singer Cher and her husband, Sonny Bono. The show ran on CBS in the United States, when it premiered in August 1971. The show was canceled May 1974, due to the couple's divorce, though the duo would reunite in 1976 for the identically-formatted The Sonny & Cher Show, which ran until 1977.
Hee Haw was an American variety show featuring a mixture of country music and comedy skits. Co-hosted by Buck Owens and Roy Clark for most of the series, the show also guested well-established country music stars including Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton. Originally airing on CBS from 1969 to 1971, the show ran for over 20 years in syndication until 1993.
The Johnny Cash Show was an American television music variety show hosted by Johnny Cash. The Screen Gems 58-episode series ran from June 7, 1969 to March 31, 1971 on ABC; it was taped at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. The show reached No. 17 in the Nielsen ratings in 1970. Cash opened each show, and its regulars included members of his touring troupe, June Carter Cash and the Carter Family, The Statler Brothers, Carl Perkins, and The Tennessee Three, with Australian-born musical director-arranger-conductor Bill Walker. The Statler Brothers performed brief comic interludes.It featured many folk-country musicians, such as Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt, Kris Kristofferson, Mickey Newbury, Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, Merle Haggard, James Taylor and Tammy Wynette. It also featured other musicians such as jazz great Louis Armstrong, who died eight months after appearing on the show.
Claymation's dancing raisins---a pop-culture phenomenon in the '80s---took viewers on musical tours in this Saturday-morning series. 'Raisin' creator Will Vinton won an Academy Award for a 1974 Claymation short titled 'Closed Mondays.'