Tom Smothers, the comedic half of the Smothers Brothers, has died at the age of 86

He lost the first round of his campaign to have Pete Seeger, who had been absent from television after being blacklisted in the 1950s, perform his anti-war song. “Waist deep in the big mud.” The segment was pulled in 1967 but aired a year later.

“TV is old and tired,” Mr. Smothers told McCall's magazine in 1968. TV is a lie. The people who censor our programs are all conditioned into a very fearful way of thinking, which is reflected in the type of programs that the networks offer. Television should be as free as movies, newspapers, and music to reflect what is happening.

CBS began insisting that an advance tape of each week's show be sent to the network and its affiliates for review. In April 1969, when a tape of the show featuring a satirical tirade by comedian David Steinberg failed to arrive on schedule for a second time, CBS informed the brothers that they had terminated their contract and that the show, which had been optioned, had been picked up. It was renewed two weeks ago and will be cancelled.

The move wasn't a complete surprise.

“Tommy has been pinning pins on CBS ever since he started feeling the oats when he found he could get good ratings,” Percy Sheen, television critic for the Boston Globe, wrote. “He was at times mean, ugly, resentful, and stubborn. In his various arguments with the network, he refused to yield a single iota. Every deletion meant a battle.”

TV Guide, in a stern editorial, deemed the cancellation “prudent, determined and entirely justified.”

Throughout the rest of his life, Smothers remained convinced that President Richard Nixon, who had taken office only three months earlier after defeating Vice President Hubert Humphrey, had pressured CBS to cancel the show.

“When Nixon said, ‘I want these men to go,’ they walked away,” he said “speak freely” TV show produced by the First Amendment Center, in 2001. “If Humphrey had been elected, we would have participated.”