All the conventions we take for granted on television today – from the formalized game show to the monologue on the talk show was 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, who 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 on Jan. 2, airing every Wednesday (at 8 p.m. on WCBB Channel 10) 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, ‘f 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. Same thing with Tim Conway. Same thing with Carol Burnett, who is always showing encouragement, and Betty White when she was on the show was always (helpful).”

Orlando also remembers a run-in with Gleason, who was known to be difficult. It was Orlando’s first time on the show, and Gleason made a rude remark about the fact that Hopkins and Vincent were black.

Orlando insisted on an apology, but Gleason ignored him. The taping didn’t go well, and the show’s producer admonished Orlando for crossing Gleason. When the show was over Orlando was summoned to Gleason’s room.

“He says, ‘Tony, you see the book that’s on the table?’ with his back to me. ‘Yes, sir, Mr. Gleason.’ ‘I want you to open it to the first page. I said, Well, Mr. Gleason, that’s your script book (He said) ‘I hope you’ll take it with you. I really am honored to have you here, really.’ He said, ‘Open to the first page.’ And I opened up the book and I have it to this day. It says, ‘Dear Tony, I apologize. I was wrong. You were right. How sweet it is to tell the truth, Jackie.”‘

The nimble-witted 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.”