By 1967, Carol Burnett had been a popular veteran of television for 12 years, having made her first appearances in 1955 on The Paul Winchell Show and the sitcom Stanley starring the comedian Buddy Hackett.

Within the first five years of this contract, she had the option to "push the button", a phrase the programming executives used,[7] and be put on the air in 30 one-hour, pay-or-play variety shows.

After discussion with her husband Joe Hamilton, in the last week of the fifth year of the contract, Burnett decided to call the head of CBS Michael Dann and exercise the clause.

[8] The popular and long-running variety show not only established Burnett as a television superstar, but it also made her regular supporting cast household names.

[9] In addition to Carol Burnett, the cast consisted of: Comedic actor Harvey Korman had done many guest shots in TV sitcoms.

Actor Lyle Waggoner had recently auditioned for the title role in the ABC series Batman but was passed over in favor of Adam West.

In a 2003 interview with Terry Gross, she said Mackie would put rice in the “older woman” undergarments, where typically cotton would’ve been used, to make the saggy breasts have weight and movement as the characters walked or danced, such as when Burnett portrayed Norma Desmond or Charo's mother.

Other notable guests include Olivia De Havilland, Lucille Ball, Joanne Woodward, Rita Hayworth, Dinah Shore, Rock Hudson, Cher, Martha Raye, Maggie Smith, Don Rickles, George Carlin, Gloria Swanson, Ella Fitzgerald, Joan Rivers, Rita Moreno, Tony Randall, Betty White, Phyllis Diller, Eddie Albert, Carol Channing, Betty Grable, Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Jean Stapleton, Robert Goulet, William Conrad and Liza Minnelli.

Lesser-known actors who appeared include Brad Trumbull, Bob Duggan, Dick Patterson, and Inga Neilsen.

A favorite feature consisted of an unrehearsed question-and-answer segment with the audience in CBS Studio 33 lasting about three to four minutes at the start of most shows.

Differently colored cue cards (black, blue, green, and red) were used for each major performer ("Carol Burnett: Bump-Up the Lights").

Some, like the Hitler puppet, made it into the final broadcast; others, like a notably convoluted story about Siamese elephants joined at the trunk (ad-libbed during a 1977 "Mama's Family" sketch), were edited, the uncensored version only appearing years later on CBS specials.

When The Carol Burnett Show made its network debut on CBS-TV on September 11, 1967, it was scheduled on Mondays at 10:00 pm (EST) opposite NBC's I Spy and ABC's The Big Valley.

For season five, CBS moved the show to Wednesdays at 8:00 pm (EST), where its chief competition was NBC's Adam-12 and the ABC sitcoms Bewitched and The Courtship of Eddie's Father.

Then in season nine, because of his many popular guest appearances on the series, Tim Conway was signed as a full-time regular, joining Korman and Lawrence.

In November 1976, the series' tenth year, The Carol Burnett Show presented what would become one of its best-known and most well-regarded sketches: "Went with the Wind!"

After a decade of working with Burnett and winning several Emmy Awards, Korman had been offered a contract by ABC to headline his own series.

Regular guest stars Steve Lawrence and Ken Berry were brought in to fill the void left by Korman and Van Dyke.

Due to the unavailability of Harvey Korman (who, ironically, had been under contract to ABC since he had left Burnett's show in 1977), comic actors Kenneth Mars and Craig Richard Nelson were added to the supporting cast, joining Lawrence and Conway.

The guest stars in that four-week period were (chronologically) Cheryl Ladd, Alan Arkin, Penny Marshall, and Sally Field.

The reviews of the series were very favorable, with several critics heartily welcoming Burnett back to weekly television, albeit on a limited basis.

The "Family" sketches led to a 1982 CBS made-for-television film called Eunice starring Burnett, Korman, Lawrence, Betty White, and Ken Berry.

The success of this program spawned a spin-off sitcom titled Mama's Family, starring Vicki Lawrence and Ken Berry, which ran from 1983 to 1990.

[19] The cast of The Carol Burnett Show was reunited on four CBS television specials: Note: only the first appearance by the guest star is listed.

Considering her large body of work, and due in great part to this TV show, Burnett received Kennedy Center Honors in 2003, and was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in October 2013.

[23] On September 13, 2016, Burnett released her memoir about the show titled In Such Good Company: Eleven Years of Laughter, Mayhem, and Fun in the Sandbox.

[25] In the early 2000s, certain full-length episodes of The Carol Burnett Show were released on VHS and DVD by Columbia House on a subscription basis (now discontinued).

[26] Previously, due to an ongoing legal battle with the production company Bob Banner Associates, the episodes from those seasons had never appeared in syndication nor been released on home media.