I think at our house, when I was a kid, we must have watched all the variety shows--and for myself I'm including in this category--but not limiting it to--Red Skelton, Ed Sullivan, Dean Martin, Jackie Gleason, Andy Williams, Flip Wilson, the Osmonds, and the King Sisters. There must be more.
Of course, Carol Burnett is sui generis. 
I used to love the variety show format, too. I was more fond of the ones that accented
comedy over the music, though. Now, I appreciate the ones with the music in them a lot
more than I did as a kid.
My favorite variety show of all time was:
Other huge favorties were and are:
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
The Red SKelton Hour
The Sonny & Cher Show
The Carol Burnett Show
(I always loved that her shows' initials were also CBS!)
The Dean Martin Show
The Dean Martin Show wasn't one I could always stay up to see when I was a kid.
It was on at 10pm. And it wasn't rerun during the summer when I could have seen
it. So, I don't know a lot about it, but I really liked it, even though it was more
attuned to music, but there were so many stars! I know recently many have
been released on dvd at Time Lilfe, but I haven't seen them, though I will someday.
I don't really know much about the black and white variety shows before 1965,
like Danny Kaye, Perry Como, Judy Garland (I have seen some of these on video)
and Dinah Shore, Pat Boone, Nat King Cole and the like.
I remember some shorter lived series like Julie Andrews, Pat Paulsen, Leslie Uggams,
Tom Jones, Jim Nabors and Jerry Lewis. Milton Berle tried a series revival in 1968, or
thereabouts. Kraft Music Hall was always a hit or miss proposition because it had no
regular host each week. I did not really gravitate toward all the country star shows
because I was not really fond of all their music--Glen Campbell (the one I saw mostly),
Mack Davis, Johnny Cash (ugh) and the syndicated ones from Nashville. I did like
Flip Wilson (he appeared on Laugh-In a lot) but I did not like the format of his show,
with the studio audience practically in his lap or in every shot. It really annoyed me.
I know Ed Sullivan's show was variety, but I didn't really watch it, we watched Disney's
Wonderful World of Color more often than not.
I remember The Beautiful Phylllis Diller Show. Shields & Yarnell and Hee-Haw. When I went off to
college I only brielfy saw some of those variety series that were the last of their kind like Donny & Marie
and The Captain & Tenille and what probably killed the genre-Pink Lady & Jeff!
In 1977 I was fortunate to see one of the Laugh-In '77 specials taped. I alwasy looked forward to
Bob Hope's specials, at least his monologues. and the Jack Benny Variety Specials.
I always wanted Paul Lynde to have a variety series or be a regular on Laugh-In!
Of the six variety series I listed as my favorites, there are episodes one can find of all of those
on dvd, which is remarkable considering music rights hamper most all variety show releases.
I still enjoy watching many of them.
Of course, SNL starts out in the Classic TV Series era we've outlined! I still watch that!
It's about 38 seasons now! Incredible...Wow!
