TODAY is the 30th anniversary of the premiere of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” an event I alone seem to have put on my calendar. Yet for so many reasons, that CBS prime-time variety series accounts for such an important chapter in TV history that it deserves and almost demands to be remembered.
This isn’t just an exercise in TV nostalgia, either. The success of Tom and Dick Smothers and their controversial 1967-69 show contains a great lesson about how networks, even today, could win big by taking a long shot on a relatively low-risk gamble.
At this point in TV history, the reigning night of TV is NBC’s Thursday, and the linchpin is “Seinfeld.
” It’s such a popular show, the other networks can’t seem to throw anything at it that might even dent it. What’s a rival to do?
Thirty years ago, the most popular night of TV was Sunday, and the top dog was NBC’s “Bonanza.
” That Western lived up to its title in more ways than one, because it stampeded over any competition unlucky enough to face it. Jack Benny, Judy Garland, “Perry Mason” season after season, all of them squared off against the Cartwrights and were sent packing.
In the fall of 1966, CBS moved “The Garry Moore Show” opposite “Bonanza” and Moore soon found himself with the lowest-rated show on television. Impatient and desperate, CBS went to the Smothers Brothers and offered them the time slot for the rest of the season. Tom and Dick demanded creative control and with nothing to lose opposite “Bonanza,” the CBS executives agreed.
“The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” went on the air 30 years ago today and within two months, was a Top 20 hit and a certified hit series. When it returned that fall, after the summer of 1967 (think “Sgt. Pepper’s” and the Summer of Love), the Brothers’ variety series was the hippest, most relevant, most exciting show on television.
Just as “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” was indebted to “Your Show of Shows” and “That Was the Week That Was,” “Saturday Night Live” and “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” owe a major debt to the brothers Smothers (and head writer Mason Williams, a terrific musical talent as well).
While embracing show business techniques and stars of old, it also was a show that supported new talent and ideas. It pushed the TV envelope, and found ways to broadcast its messages and irreverence to an audience hungry for what it had to say. Don Knotts, Mel Torme and Ravi Shankar were guest stars on the same show; another week, so were Kate Smith and Simon & Garfunkel.
“And we had just as much respect for Kate Smith and Simon & Garfunkel,” Williams told the Daily News yesterday. “We liked the challenge of putting what would at first appear to be apples and oranges together.
”
Fights with CBS censors and executives became so intense that, despite the contractual freedoms granted the Smothers Brothers, the show was yanked off the air and the comedy team fired. (In subsequent court battles, Tom and Dick were vindicated.)
Even that behind-the-scenes battle, though, exemplified the generation gap tensions represented by the Smothers Brothers. Their hair got longer as their barbs got sharper; their humor spoke out against war, racism and big business. “Whether or not you can say it,” surprise guest George Harrison urged Tom and Dick on one 1968 show, “keep TRYING to say it.
”
Most shows on TV today aren’t saying or risking enough. And with time slots like the ones opposite “Seinfeld” and “ER” seemingly doomed to failure anyway, maybe those would be good times to try it.
