It has long been widely believed that the Smothers Brothers were canceled. In fact, their show had been renewed for the 1969-70 season, and they had sold over 90% of the ad space available. It was only when Tom Smothers began lobbying the FCC and members of Congress over corporate censorship that CBS President Robert Wood fired them. This firing resulted in a breach-of-contract lawsuit, in which CBS lost and ultimately had to pay the brothers for the season in 1973.
The brothers would often wait until the very last minute to turn that week's taping of the show over to CBS. They figured that by waiting so long it would barely give the censors time to cut out the more "objectionable" material from that week's broadcast.
When The Who made their first appearance on the show, they were to conclude their performance of "My Generation" by doing their usual instrument smashing as well as having some smoke powder ignite in Keith Moon's bass drums as well. Earlier that day at rehearsals, the band was dissatisfied with how the effect went off so they asked that more of a charge be put in. Unknown to the band, Moon put even more of a charge in later. As the band concluded their performance, instead of a smoking effect, a huge explosion occurred. This caused Moon to suffer cuts on his arm and, more importantly, Pete Townshend suffered damage to his hearing, which would affect him in later years.
The show was in the top 30 at the time that the brothers were fired. However, that mattered less for the CBS TV Network, since it was the top rated American one at the time, and thus felt the show was expendable in lieu of the political pressure from opponents like US President Nixon and the network affiliates. It has been speculated that if the show was on a lower rated network like ABC with the equivalent ratings, they would have been more inclined to tolerate the Smothers' antics. Furthermore, the show could possibly have found itself in strong position when in the early 1970s when demographic profiling information in ratings analysis encouraged a greater emphasis on attracting younger urban audiences that largely liked the show.
A sketch featuring Tom Smothers and Elaine May playing a couple of censors was deleted from one episode.