The sitcom ended up being named “The Doris Day Show” – which gave her a certain amount of pull when it came to how everything went behind (and in) the scenes.
In fact, she was free to do basically anything she wanted when it came to how a majority of things went, such as the script and actors.
Losing her husband and finding out that he was responsible for her going broke, and a half a million dollars in debt was bad enough, but that wasn’t even the end of her troubles. It turns out that before Melcher died, he’d signed a deal for her to do a sitcom - and she was not happy.
She’d made it perfectly clear to him that she would rather die than do a sitcom, and at this point, she was probably starting to feel less bad about him suddenly dying, and more so about how he’d completely betrayed her before he did.
She tried everything she could think of to get out of doing the show. But the contract had already been signed and she was locked in.
Fortunately, she took her power back when she and her own lawyer made changes to the contract that ensured her ultimate success. They also tried to make it as painless as possible on the actress.
"The Doris Day Show" ran on CBS for five years, from 1968 to 1973. It was known for its major changes between seasons, including a plethora of cast members.
Although Martin Melcher had signed Day up for the show without her knowledge and consent, he was still given the credit of “executive producer” for season one. But after the first season, Day gained a bit more control over what went on.
Although she may not have wanted it originally, she seemed to really come into her own on the show. For the first three years, it operated as a family sitcom, until it radically shifted in the fourth year to focus more on Day as a single woman.
It was in those years that everyone wanted to see more daring and dangerous female characters, and were starting to get tired of seeing the same old type of “man marries woman, has child and works until he dies, rinse and repeat” type of deal.