At that time, Happy Days was the best vehicle to test Williams in a Prime Time environment. One has to remember that Happy Days is one of the biggest spin-off trees in TV history (Itself being a spin off)
In general, spin-offs are finding talent and testing them on a show with a similar demographic to see if they might be able to hold up the ratings and drive more viewership.
Williams was known for his spontaneous comedy. It's known that many of the M&M scripts consisted of Dawber's lines followed by "Robin does something funny"
When the episodes turned in very high ratings it was decided that it was worth doing the pilot run on M&M and see how it went. On a side note, it is evident that Williams' drug issues, tied to the lack of organized writing left that show (and cast) to get somewhat retooled almost every season.
I'm sorry I can't back this up with any references. It was sort of a pet 'trivia' hobby of mine and I've always loved to talk about the Happy Days spin-off tree.
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