The TV Zone

Dateline: BEVERLY HILLS

When you walk into a Hollywood-area hotel and the first thing you see in the lobby is Tim Conway – or a buff athlete standing there on two exposed high-tech artificial legs – you gotta figure you're back at press tour.

This is why we love TV. It gives us everything. (And Tony Orlando.)

The Television Critics Association brings together disparities like that twice a year, as members gather for a couple of weeks to preview what's hot (or not) in future months all over the tube.

PBS is kicking things off this go-round with two days (Tuesday-Wednesday) of press conferences for documentaries, Jane Austen adaptations, the inevitable Ken Burns, "The Jewish Americans," and a dash of showbiz, too. Conway was here, along with Orlando, Betty White and some other vintage entertainers, to talk about public TV's ongoing "Pioneers of Television" series.

Carl Reiner and Mandy Patinkin arrive shortly for "The Jewish Americans," a January study of, well, Jewish life in America. Burns does lunch for his September-starting opus, "The War," about, as Archie Bunker would say, The Big One. And Carol Burnett closes out the afternoon today as one of PBS' latest "American Masters."

So stay tuned. We'll be right back . . .