On the wall of the cabana alongside Tommy Smothers' swimming pool in Hollywood Hills hangs a life preserver labeled S.S. Unsinkable. Lately, following his censorship dustup with CBS and the network's subsequent banishment of his music and comedy series, it has seemed rather out of place. But last week the Smothers Brothers bobbed up again, bound for the national airwaves. Unlike Joe Namath, they have not been persuaded to rejoin their old employer. They have beaten the ban by forming what amounts to an ad hoc TV network of their own.
The Smothers network, pieced together at the local level out of independent stations and independent-minded network affiliates, premieres Sept. 10 with the fateful Easter Sunday tape CBS refused to broadcast last April. So far, stations in 75 cities have booked the show, and Smothers Inc. counts on signing up another 50. The total—though short of their old 190-city CBS line-up—includes most of the major U.S. population centers and some 90% of all U.S. households equipped with TV sets. Unlike most spliced-together syndication deals, the Smothers link-up will be simultaneous (air time: 8 p.m., everywhere) to allow for topical references and nationwide promotion and sponsorship.
Except for a changed ending (commemoration of the first anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. is out of date), the show will consist of the same tape that CBS decided "would be considered irreverent and offensive by a large segment of our audience" during the week of the Eisenhower funeral. CBS specifically cited a parody sermonette by Religion Satirist David Steinberg (his final line: "Let's put Christ back into Christmas and 'ch' back into Chanukah"). But more likely the network objected to the show's running gags about John Pastore, the influential chairman and Mrs. Grundy of the Senate Communications Subcommittee. For example, Guest Dan Rowan of Laugh-In gave the Senator the "fickle-finger-of-fate award" for "keeping up the good work," though Tommy and President Nixon (whom Rowan pretended to phone) said that they had never heard of the man ("Pastore. p-a-S-T-O-R-E").
In presenting the program, Tommy and Dick are not exactly plunging bravely into the unknown. The Canadian commercial network transmitted the show on schedule last spring, and ever since, Tommy has toured the U.S., screening the tape for Congressmen, Federal Communications commissioners and the press. The viewers' overwhelming reaction was that the program was not only inoffensive, but probably one of the best Brothers shows of the season.
Stations that sign up with the Smothers network get the last-year show free —in return for a commitment to carry in December a 90-minute Smothers special to be taped largely in Toronto. After that, Tommy figures that Smothers Inc. will have whetted enough viewer appetite to syndicate a regular series of monthly specials—or even win second-season time on one of the established networks on their own terms.