[[CBS thought that Beverly Hillbillies was not sophisticated enough for the “hip” audience it wanted to attract]]
Beverly Hillbillies was replaced by a more sophisticated show that featured “Meathead” and toilets loudly flushing upstairs.
CBS Chairman Bill Paley was horrified at the prospect of the show on his network - until he saw how much money it would make him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_T._Aubrey
His formula was characterized by a CBS executive as “broads, bosoms, and fun,”[3] resulting in such shows as The Beverly Hillbillies and Gilligan’s Island, despised by the critics – and CBS chairman William S. Paley – but extremely popular with viewers. While Aubrey had a great feel for what would be successful with viewers, he had nothing but contempt for them. “The American public is something I fly over,” he said.[14] His former boss at ABC, Oliver E. Treyz, said at programming “Jim Aubrey was one of the most effective ever, from the standpoint of delivering what the public wanted and making money. He was the best program judge in the business.”
Aubrey said in 1986 of Paley and his programming choices:
I’d gone to CBS, and I’d become convinced Beverly Hillbillies was going to work. Bill Paley wasn’t convinced. Bill has this great sense of propriety. Putting aside the Sarnoffs and all the other great names of broadcasting, Paley stood – stands – head and shoulders above everyone else. He had this blasting genius of instinctively looking at a show and knowing if it should be on the air. He could also be ruthless and distant ... But Bill was intuitive about both the business and creative sides of TV. And he genuinely disliked Beverly Hillbillies. I put it on the schedule anyway.[4]
“The hucksters’ huckster,” David Halberstam labeled him, “whose greatest legacy to television was a program called The Beverly Hillbillies, a series so demented and tasteless that it boggles the mind”[15] Columnist Murray Kempton described The Beverly Hillbillies as, “a confrontation of the characters of John Steinbeck with the environment of Spyros Skouras,”[16] the extravagant chairman of Twentieth Century Fox. But regardless of what anyone said about Hillbillies, the public loved it. The Nielsen ratings showed 57 million were watching the show – one in three Americans.