overview
The Judy Garland Show is an American musical variety television series. The show aired on CBS 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 would see three different producers in the course of its 26 episodes and would go through a number of other key personnel changes. With the change in producers would also come changes to the format of the show, which started as comedy/variety but would switch 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 was up against Bonanza, then the fourth most popular program on television,and consistently performed poorly in the ratings in comparison. Although fans rallied in an attempt to save the series, CBS announced its cancellation after a single season. Subsequent attempts by CBS to make a dent in "Bonanza" with variety shows hosted by Garry Moore, Steve Lawrence and Leslie Uggams all failed, and were canceled more quickly than Garland's.