| Date |
Event
|
| January 6
|
The weekly overnight news program World News Now debuts on ABC.
|
| January 10
|
The Days of Our Lives nighttime special One Stormy Night is broadcast by NBC.
|
| January 19
|
The World Wrestling Federation holds the fifth annual Royal Rumble event on pay-per-view. In the main event, Ric Flair wins the Royal Rumble match and the vacant WWF World Heavyweight Championship.
|
| January 26
|
During halftime of CBS' telecast of Super Bowl XXVI, Fox counter-programs with a special live-edition of the sketch comedy program In Living Color.
|
| In a 60 Minutes interview, Bill and Hillary Clinton deny the allegations made against Bill in an interview that was viewed by millions.[1]
|
| February 14
|
Green Bay Fox station WXGZ goes dark, and former Green Bay independent station WGBA-TV took the Fox affiliation.
|
| February 22
|
Barbra Streisand makes a surprise cameo appearance during a "Coffee Talk" sketch with Mike Myers, Madonna, and Roseanne Barr on NBC's Saturday Night Live.
|
| February 24
|
CBS acquires the assets of Midwest Communications, owners of the network's dominant affiliate in the Twin Cities, WCCO-TV. This also results in an affiliation swap in both Marquette, Michigan and Green Bay, Wisconsin: WJMN-TV, the Midwest-owned satellite station of Green Bay's ABC affiliate WFRV-TV, swaps its own ABC affiliation with primary CBS/secondary NBC affiliate WLUC-TV on this date, while WFRV-TV itself swaps with CBS affiliate WBAY-TV on March 15. (The delay in Green Bay occurs since WBAY-TV wanted to swap on or near March 17, the 39th anniversary of its first sign-on.)
|
| February 29
|
Full Moon Over Miami, a one-off programming block of a three-way, two-hour crossover event airs on NBC. It involves three television sitcoms created by Susan Harris: The Golden Girls, Empty Nest and Nurses. The event depicts a fictional full moon on Leap Day storming into the storylines of the three series set in Miami, Florida.
|
| March 28
|
CBS broadcasts the East Regional men's basketball final between Duke and Kentucky. With 2.1 seconds remaining in overtime, Christian Laettner hit a jumper as time expired to give Duke the 104–103 win. The game which was called by Verne Lundquist and Len Elmore, has since been considered by many to be the greatest college basketball game ever played.[2][3]
|
| April 4
|
TBS' Saturday afternoon/early evening World Championship Wrestling program is renamed WCW Saturday Night. The main event is Steve Austin defeating The Z-Man in a 2-out-of-3 falls match for the WCW World Television Title.
|
| April 6
|
Barney & Friends debuts on PBS.
|
| April 18
|
Sean McDonough makes his debut as the new lead play–by–play announcer for Major League Baseball telecasts on CBS. Replacing Jack Buck, who was dismissed by the network following the 1991 World Series, McDonough would serve in that capacity alongside analyst Tim McCarver for the final two years of CBS' contract with Major League Baseball.
|
| April 25
|
ABC broadcasts the series finales of Who's the Boss?, Growing Pains, and MacGyver.
|
| April 29
|
Batman (1989 film) makes its broadcast television premiere on CBS.
|
| April 30
|
The Cosby Show airs its series finale on NBC.
|
| The Nickelodeon time capsule was buried at Nickelodeon Studios in Orlando, Florida.
|
| May 1
|
Sesame Street broadcasts its 3,000th episode.
|
| May 19
|
Vice President of the United States Dan Quayle speaks at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. During his speech,[4] he criticizes the Murphy Brown character for "mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone".[5][6][7][8]
|
| May 22
|
After 30 years, 66-year-old Johnny Carson hosts The Tonight Show on NBC for the 4,531st and last time.
|
| May 25
|
Jay Leno debuts as host of NBC's The Tonight Show.
|
| May 26–June 1
|
SportsChannel America airs the last of four consecutive Stanley Cup Finals.
|
| May 30
|
The final Hee Haw airs in syndication.
|
| June 1
|
In New York City, NBC's flagship television station WNBC dropped the "-TV" suffix from its call letters (following the sale in 1988 of its sister radio station WNBC-AM by NBC's then-parent company General Electric) in favor of the new branding slogan "4 New York". The accompanying station image campaign was titled "We're 4 New York" and featured a musical theme composed by Edd Kalehoff. The campaign is revived two times, one is during the 2002 Winter Olympics and once again in 2007.
|
| June 3
|
Presidential candidate Bill Clinton appears on The Arsenio Hall Show and sits in with the house band on saxophone.
|
| June 10
|
The first ever edition of the MTV Movie Awards is broadcast.
|
| June 23
|
Another World broadcasts its first and only primetime episode on NBC, named Summer Desire, right before the Daytime Emmy Awards.
|
| June 29
|
On CBS, Family Feud with Ray Combs becomes the hour-long Family Feud Challenge.
|
| July 16
|
The hit Nickelodeon favorite Rugrats begins in Malaysia on TV3.
|
| August 7
|
After Growing Pains actress Tracey Gold loses a massive amount of weight due to anorexia nervosa, she is placed in hospital care. As a result, she is written out of most of the ABC sitcom's final episodes.
|
| August 10
|
Children's television series Shining Time Station goes to air on Channel 2 in New Zealand. The Thomas stories had previously aired on Channel 2 as a stand-alone program after airing on TV3 for two years prior to its American spinoff series airing in the country.
|
| August 15
|
Nickelodeon begins a Saturday night programming block called SNICK.
|
| August 16
|
Ron Simmons defeats Big Van Vader for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship on WCW Main Event to become the first recognized black world champion in professional wrestling history.[9]
|
| August 31
|
The fifth annual SummerSlam event airs on pay-per-view. Taking place in Wembley Stadium, London, England, two days prior, this was the first major World Wrestling Federation pay-per-view to take place outside of North America. The main event saw The British Bulldog defeating Bret Hart to win the WWF Intercontinental Championship.
|
| September 2
|
TBS airs World Championship Wrestling's Clash of the Champions XX from the Center Stage Theater in Atlanta. The event was not only the 20th time WCW held a Clash of the Champions show but also marked the 20th anniversary of professional wrestling being shown on TBS as Mid-Atlantic Wrestling in 1972. It also was the final wrestling TV appearance for André the Giant, who died several months later. The main event saw the team of Rick Rude, Jake Roberts, Super Invader, and Big Van Vader defeated the team of Sting, Nikita Koloff, and The Steiner Brothers.
|
| September 4
|
Scared Silent: Ending and Exposing Child Abuse, a one-hour live special hosted by Oprah Winfrey, is simulcast on CBS and NBC. Two nights later, the special is rebroadcast on ABC.[10]
|
| September 5
|
Batman: The Animated Series premieres on Fox Kids.
|
| September 8
|
NY1, a 24-hour news channel dedicated to New York City, launches.
|
| September 12
|
NBC is the first network to cancel all their Saturday morning cartoons in favor of four shows, Saved By The Bell, California Dreams, NBA Inside Stuff, and Name Your Adventure under the TNBC banner. A weekend version of Today, which debuted on August 1, is also added. Animated programming would not return to NBC until 2006.
|
| September 21
|
Square One TV begins its fifth and final season on PBS.
|
| September 24
|
The Sci-Fi Channel launches with a broadcast of Star Wars.
|
| September 27
|
Marlon Wayans and Alexandra Wentworth join the cast of the Fox sketch comedy show In Living Color. Wayans only joins the cast for 13 episodes, but Wentworth stays full-time for both this and the next season (which would turn out to be the show's fifth and final season).
|
| October 1
|
The Turner Broadcasting System's Cartoon Network goes on the air. The Merrie Melodies short, Rhapsody Rabbit, was the very first cartoon to be broadcast on the network.
|
| October 3
|
Sinéad O'Connor causes controversy when she rips up a picture of Pope John Paul II on NBC's Saturday Night Live.
|
| October 10
|
Michael Jackson's concert Live in Bucharest: The Dangerous Tour airs on HBO.
|
| October 12
|
James Doohan guest stars as Montgomery Scott in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
|
| October 14
|
A Bunch of Munsch episode "The Paper Bag Princess" is broadcast on Showtime.
|
| October 17
|
Kristy McNichol's last episode of Empty Nest, entitled The Boomerang Affair, is broadcast on NBC. (McNichol would return for the series finale in 1995.)
|
| October 31
|
The first part of the pilot episode for X-Men airs on Fox Kids. The second part would air on November 7.
|
| November 1
|
Texas billionaire Ross Perot acquires blocks of TV time for his presidential campaign.
|
| November 14
|
Nickelodeon broadcasts the Kids' Choice Awards live[11] for the first time.
|
| November 18
|
The Seinfeld episode "The Contest" is broadcast on NBC. (Despite its controversy, the episode will win an Emmy Award and be named as the number one episode of all time by TV Guide.)
|
| November 21
|
An episode of Captain Planet and the Planeteers titled "A Formula for Hate" becomes the first episode in an American children's animated series to directly deal with the HIV/AIDS pandemic.[12]
|
| November 27
|
The TV movie Saved by the Bell: Hawaiian Style is broadcast by NBC.
|
| December 1
|
On CBS, The Young and the Restless broadcasts its 5,000th episode. In celebration of this, a Y&R-themed Showcase is presented on The Price is Right, which also airs on CBS.
|
| December 2
|
The final episode of A Bunch of Munsch is broadcast on Showtime.
|
