The year 1969 in television involved some significant events. Below is a list of television-related events in 1969.
Events
January 4 – NBC expands the Huntley-Brinkley Report to Saturdays, with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley alternating weeks anchoring the news solo. Later, mediocre ratings prompt NBC to replace the duo with other newsmen, with the broadcast rechristened NBC Saturday News.
January 13 – Dick York collapses on the set of Bewitched and is rushed to the hospital. He resigns from the show due to health reasons and is replaced by Dick Sargent.
February 5 – ABC runs the one and only airing of the notorious flop Turn-On.
February 19 – At exactly 4:31 p.m. at the CBS Studio Center, with Jim Nabors saying the line "How interesting – and did she?", Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. shoots its final scene and completes its run.
April 4 – CBS bans the Smothers Brothers. Three days later, Walter Cronkite opens the evening newscast by confirming that the Smothers Brothers have been replaced by Hee Haw – effective immediately. But because it takes two months to assemble a typical Hee-Haw segment, CBS has to fill the time period with specials until Hee Haw premieres on June 15.
April 11 – Rome, as only he could see it, is presented in Fellini, a Director's Notebook, an NBC special.
April 13 – Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore are reunited for a special, Dick Van Dyke and the Other Woman, on CBS.
June 3 – The science fiction television series Star Trek airs its final new episode after being canceled by NBC. Its subsequent sale into rerun syndication soon after leads to a rise in popularity that transforms Star Trek into one of the century's most successful entertainment franchises.
June 21 – Patrick Troughton makes his last regular appearance as the Second Doctor in the concluding moments of Episode 10 of the Doctor Who serial The War Games. It also marks the final time that the series was broadcast in black and white.
Summer – In a surprise announcement, Martin Landau and Barbara Bain announce they are leaving the cast of Mission: Impossible. Landau's replacement is former Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy, while a permanent replacement for Bain would not be chosen until the 1970–71 season.
July 3 – An elephant called Lulu runs amok on Blue Peter. The clip is subsequently repeated many times, becoming the archetypal British TV "blooper".
July 20 – A live transmission from the Moon is viewed by 720 million people around the world, with the landing of Apollo 11: at 10:56 p.m. EDT on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the surface of the Moon, broadcast live.[1]
November 13 – Vice-President Spiro Agnew, in a televised speech from Des Moines, Iowa, stirs up a national controversy by attacking the network news commentaries.
November 15 – Colour introduced to BBC1 and ITV in the UK.
November 8 – NBC airs the pilot episode of Rod Serling's science fiction anthology series Night Gallery, which would be picked up as a regular series for the 1970–71 television season
