This Day in TV History: The Ray Stevens Show premieres on CBS

50 years ago today, a summer replacement series for The Andy Williams Show debuted on NBC. That series was The Ray Stevens Show--or at least, it would become that.  Its original title was the much less elegant Andy Williams Presents The Ray Stevens Show.  The official Ray Stevens YouTube account is nice enough to have posted the first segment from that episode!

I like that title, and in fact I wish every spinoff was named in similar fashion.  Andy Griffith Presents Gomer Pyle.  Cheers Presents Frasier. All in the Family Presents The Jeffersons.

And of course we would all have enjoyed Hill Street Blues Presents Beverly Hills Buntz.

There was precedent for that kind of thing.  That very night, ABC broadcast another episode of Jimmy Durante Presents the Lennon Sisters.  It still sounds goofy!

As for the Stevens show, it lasted till August but didn't return after the summer of 1970.