All the conventions we take for granted on television today — from the formalized game show to the monologue on the talk show — were begun by a group of innovators who had no idea they were setting precedents.

People like Dick Cavett, Jackie Gleason, Phyllis Diller, Johnny Carson, Ernie Kovacs, Steve Allen and Carol Burnett were the pioneers on that mesmerizing little black box.

Diller was one of the first female comics to hit it big anywhere. Today at 90, she recalls, "I didn't mean to be a trailblazer. I just needed a job, and my talent was being funny. And I didn't even recognize that fact. It was my husband — Sherwood Diller — was the person who kept insisting that I become a comic. And I kept pointing out to him that there were five children involved here. And he said, 'We'll send them home.' I said, 'I can't. They're ours.'

"And we argued about it for two years. That was our longest argument — a two-year argument culminating in the fact that one day I said, 'OK.' Then my problem was how do you become a comic? And I called the Red Cross in San Francisco and I said, 'I have a show. Where do you want it?' They said, 'The Presidio.' So that's where I did my first show."

Diller, and many others like her, will be celebrated in a four-part PBS documentary series set to premiere today, airing every Wednesday until Jan. 23. Each of the one-hour episodes focuses on a different genre: sitcoms, late-night, variety and game shows.

Tim Conway, so hilarious as one of the repertory zanies on "The Carol Burnett Show," was still a scrub in the Army when he became an avid fan of "The Steve Allen Show." "I was defending Seattle, and would watch the show, like for two years ... every night. And I thought, 'If I ever was on television, that's what I would want to do, what these guys are doing — Don Knotts and all the rest of the guys.'

"I thought that was just the funniest stuff, because they enjoyed doing what they were doing so much. It was so freewheeling, and it was LIVE. You never knew when a mistake was going to come up. ... I came out here, and I did Steve Allen, so when they called up and said, 'Do you want to do "McHale's Navy?' I said, 'No, I did Steve Allen. What else is there to do?' But they made me come out here and do that. Now here I am."

Tony Orlando was a fresh face on the scene with his backup singers Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent (known as Dawn) when he snagged a guest spot on "The Tonight Show."

"I was a nervous wreck, and Sammy Davis Jr. was saying to me that two shows made him throw up before the show out of nervousness: one was the Academy Awards and doing 'The Tonight Show.' It was that important to do 'The Tonight Show.' And when I went on and finished my song, I remember this man (Davis) coming up to me, recognizing that I was scared to death, not knowing what the outcome of the performance would be, walking up to me saying, 'You know, your career is going to go a long way. You did very well,' encouraging me."

The nimble-witted Dick Cavett set the tone for TV interviewers that were to follow. Cavett remembers Jack Paar, who started "The Tonight Show." "Jack was the most neurotic, dangerous, brilliant, weird, unsorted-out, fascinating personality of my lifetime on television," says Cavett.

"And the great Kenneth Tynan said about Jack once, 'Even if he's sitting there with Cary Grant, you watch Jack, afraid that if you look away you might miss a live nervous breakdown on the screen.' And that was true. That danger quality. Nobody's ever had anything like it."

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