thing to it , The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis , ran on CBS from 1959 to 1963 and featured teens Dobie Gillis and his beatnik best friend Maynard G . Krebs as they contemplated life , love , and money . However , the musings of girls were absent . The Patty Duke Show , by contrast , established female concerns as important and made Patty Duke a teen idol , consolidated by her recording career and hit single “ Don ’ t Just Stand There ” and her teen movie Billie . Later there would be Gidget , That Girl !, The Mary Tyler Moore Show , and most recently , Disney-Channel fare with Miley Cyrus , Demi Lovato , and Selena Gomez , but by featuring identical teen cousins with different personalities , concerns , and techniques , The Patty Duke Show broke ground in presenting contrasting aspects of youthful femininity . Girls in the audience , looking for cues on how to negotiate romantic relationships in a changing society , found useful scenarios and solutions , making The Patty Duke Show the water-cooler topic--or in the parlance of mass communication , the conversational currency for young females . The show remained popular for three seasons until 1966 , when ABC made the decision to cancel it rather incur its costly conversion to color at a time when teen culture was moving toward psychedelic images and harder , British-inspired rock and roll . From 1988 to 1993 , The Patty Duke Show reruns aired on Nick at Nite , in 1999 CBS ran a reunion show , and in the past year the original cast reunited for advertisements urging babyboomers to register online for Social Security . The Patty Duke Show continues to resonate with those who remember its lessons about love and romance , providing them with much more than a memorable theme song .
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