Sky takes over production of Five News from ITN. The first scheduled Sky produced news programme had been due to air on 3 January, but two shorter bulletins for 1 and 2 January are hastily added to provide updates following the 2004 Boxing Day Indian Ocean tsunami.[1]
5 January – Desperate Housewives makes its initial UK debut, at 10:00pm on Channel 4. Overnight figures indicate it achieves an audience of 4.4 million viewers, becoming the second highest rating debut for an American series in the channel's history, behind ER in 1995.[2][3]
Christian Voice confirms plans to launch a private blasphemy prosecution against the BBC for screening Jerry Springer: The Opera.[5] The group subsequently attempts to prosecute BBC Director-GeneralMark Thompson, but their bid is rejected by the High Court. An attempt to overrule that decision is also rejected in December 2007.[6]
Vote for Me, a contest to find an independent Parliamentary candidate, makes its debut on ITV.[7]
14 January – ITV's Vote for Me contest is won by former lawyer and convicted fraudster Rodney Hylton-Potts, who presents a "cabbies manifesto" that includes halting immigration, scrapping the Human Rights Act and legalising all drugs. However, the programme is soon caught up in controversy because of the winning candidate's extreme political views.[10][11] Hylton-Potts goes on to stand against Conservative leader Michael Howard as a candidate for Folkestone and Hythe at the general election, but comes in seventh place and loses his deposit.[7]
21 January – The auction channel bid-up.tv is rebranded as bid.tv.
27 January – Holocaust Memorial Day and the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp are observed in the UK. BBC Two and BBC News 24 air Auschwitz Remembered, a special news programme providing coverage of memorial events.[15]
3 February – An audience member on the evening's edition of Question Time uses the show's final question to propose to his girlfriend, who says yes. It is the first time a marriage proposal has occurred on the programme in its 25-year history.[16]
9 February – The Africa-based BBC journalist and producer Kate Peyton is killed in a shooting incident in Mogadishu, Somalia while reporting on that country's nascent peace process.[19]
19 February – EastEnders celebrates its 20th anniversary on the air, airing a special episode in which Dirty Den Watts is killed by his new wife Chrissie. 14.34 million watch the episode (shown on 18 February).[23] It is the UK's second highest rated programme of 2005 (the first is an episode of Coronation Street three days later).[24]
21 February – MasterChef relaunches as MasterChef Goes Large.
22 February – Eamonn Holmes announces he will step down from his role as a GMTV presenter after twelve years.[25]
23 February – UKTV Style Gardens, a channel dedicated to gardening programmes, launches.
24 February – ITV airs another episode of its police drama The Bill to feature a storyline in which characters are killed off in a fire at Sun Hill police station. Computer generated imagery is used because producing a real explosion and fireball ripping through the station corridors is not possible.[26]
26 February – Sound TV, known pre-launch as The Great British Television Channel, launches on Sky Digital (588). It closes in the Autumn.
19 March – Ahead of the return of Doctor Who later in the month, BBC Two airs a "Doctor Who Night", with three programmes celebrating the series. The Story of Doctor Who features cast and crew, including Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy discussing the original series. Some Things You Need to Know About Doctor Who provides a bitesize guide to the programme. Finally John Humphrys presents a Doctor Who special of Mastermind in which fans answer questions about the series.[34]
Actress Kim Medcalf, who plays Sam Mitchell in EastEnders speaks to the Sunday Mirror about her decision to leave the series, and her plans to focus on stage acting. Her final scenes will be filmed in May and her final onscreen appearance will be in November.[36]
23 March – Five announce plans to move its Trisha Goddard show to a morning slot from April to rival ITV's forthcoming The Springer Show.[37]
26 March –
Nine years after its last new episode and sixteen years since its last regular run, Doctor Who returns to BBC One for a new series, the twenty-seventh in total since 1963. Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper star. An average 10.81 million viewers, over 40% of the watching audience, tune in, winning its timeslot and making it No. 3 BBC show and No. 7 across all channels for the week. The premiere episode of the revival, "Rose", written by Russell T Davies, goes on to become the UK's seventh highest rated programme of 2005.
Gordon Hendricks, performing as Elvis Presley wins the sixteenth and final series of Stars in Their Eyes. He is the second Elvis impersonator to win the contest. Stars in Their Eyes continues until the following year, with a final junior series and a number of celebrity specials.
2 April – Digital channel BBC Four broadcasts a live re-make of the famous 1953 science-fiction drama The Quatermass Experiment. The production is the first live drama broadcast by the BBC for over twenty years, and draws BBC Four's second highest audience to date, with an average of 482,000 viewers.
11 April – ITV1 refreshes its daytime schedule under the brand name ITV Day, which features established programmes such as This Morning and Loose Women joined by a whole host of new shows over the coming months. The ITV Lunchtime News is also extended to an hour as part of the schedule refresh.[42]
14 April – The BBC removes advice from its website warning that Doctor Who is too scary to be watched by children under the age of eight, describing the statement as "a mistake".[43]
3 May – The Sun reports that Labour Party chiefs are concerned that the 5 May episode of EastEnders in which Dot Cotton learns to drive could distract viewers from voting.[46]
4 May – Tim Campbell, a 27-year-old transport manager with London Underground, wins the first series of The Apprentice. His prize is a £100,000 job with Sugar's firm, Amstrad.[47]
5–6 May – Coverage of the 2005 general election is shown on British television. The Labour Party attains a third successive general election victory.
7 May – Family Affairs wins Best Storyline at the British Soap Awards for a story in which a couple discover a family friend has been abusing their daughter.[48]
13 May – To celebrate the 80th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II in 2006, Rolf Harris is to create an oil portrait of her as part of a special edition of his BBC One show Rolf on Art, it is announced.[49] The programme airs on New Year's Day 2006.[50]
16 May –
BBC Weather relaunches, changing from 2D to 3D graphics.[51]
4 July – The BBC apologises to viewers after a computer malfunction causes its new 3D weather graphics to freeze.[60]
6 July – London wins the bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics. The announcement of the decision is broadcast live on BBC One and as a newsflash on all other major terrestrial networks.
7 July
Regular programming is suspended by major networks to provide ongoing news coverage after a series of co-ordinated terrorist bombings strike London's public transport system during the morning rush hour.[61] On 12 September, the BBC defends its decision to await corroboration before giving details of the event but on 26 September Ofcom censures the BBC and other broadcasters for insensitive use of pictures.
BBC One airs an edition of Question Time from Johannesburg, South Africa as world leaders convene for the 31st G8 summit in Scotland, and following the Live 8 concerts.[30]
17 July – After forty-one years broadcasting on BBC One, music show Top of the Pops is switched to BBC Two due to declining audiences.[63] This is not enough to save it, and it is axed the following year.[64]
1 August – BBC Broadcast, formerly Broadcasting & Presentation, and responsible for the playout and branding of all BBC Channels, is sold to Creative Broadcast Services, owned by the Macquarie Capital Alliance Group and Macquarie Bank. It is renamed Red Bee Media on 31 October.
2 August – Five announces its soap, Family Affairs will be axed at the end of the year.[66]
4 August – BBC One airs Sinatra: Dark Star, a documentary investigating rumours of Frank Sinatra's links to organised crime.[67]
10 August - Lost premieres on Channel 4, garnering an audience of 6 million viewers, overtaking ER as the highest rated debut for a US series in the channel's history.[68]
17 August – ITV announces plans to launch a children's channel to rival CBBC.[70]
22 August – Peppa Pig makes its debut in the United States, on Cartoon Network's Tickle U programming block, re-dubbed with American voice actors. This turns out to be a flop, so Nick Jr airs the original British version.
3 September – After several revamps and presenting changes, BBC One airs the final edition of its children's entertainment series The Saturday Show.[71]
8 September – Faze TV, a British digital channel aimed at gay men, cancels its launch after failing to secure sufficient funding to deliver "sufficient quality."[74]
11 September – BBC One launches Sunday AM, a Sunday morning current affairs programme presented by Andrew Marr.[75]
12 September – In an interview with The Guardian, the BBC Director of News and Current Affairs Helen Boaden defends the broadcaster's decision to stick with initial reports of a power surge on the London Underground on the morning of 7 July until actual events could be corroborated, saying it was the right thing to do. "Some of our competitors talked immediately of 90 dead. They talked about three bus bombs. That was off a range of various wire services and it was complete speculation and we wouldn't go with that. We would be careful – we would try to check things out."[76]
19 September – The most famous children's classic television character Muffin the Mule (who disappeared from TV screens in the mid-1950s) is back with a brand new 2D animated series on BBC Two.
20 September
After seven and a half years, Emmerdale sees a new sequence to the opening titles of the series, with the same 1998 theme music alongside another helicopter montage, this time marginally slower and without the actors and the closing credits are generic ITV Network style credits over a continuous shot of the village, again from a helicopter, but filmed from a different angle.
26 September – The BBC is censured by Ofcom for its coverage of the London bombings on 7 July. Of particular concern to them was an incident in which footage of a man being carried by stretcher into the Royal London Hospital was shown as a BBC News 24 presenter commentated "Let's just take a look at some of the pictures coming from the Royal London." Ofcom concludes that "the pictures were used generically and the commentary did not reflect the seriousness of the images being transmitted". Channel 4 News is also criticised for not "fully reflecting the enormity of the images being reflected", although it had not breached the Ofcom regulations as the images were not used casually. ITV News is not criticised, however, because it provided a "clear narrative context [with] sensitive accompanying reporting".[79]
10 October – More4, a digital channel from Channel 4 offering factual content, launches.[84]
24 October – Sky News moves to new studios, with a new schedule and on-air look.[85]
25 October – The relaunched Doctor Who is the major winner at the annual National Television Awards in the UK, taking the Most Popular Drama award, with its stars Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper winning Most Popular Actor and Most Popular actress.
27 October–16 December – Bleak House, a 15-episode adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel of the same name designed to capture a soap opera-style audience by using Dickens's original serial structure in half-hour episodes, is broadcast on BBC One.
Sky3 is launched on British digital terrestrial and satellite platforms. On the same day Sky Mix is rebranded as Sky Two, and Sky Travel ceases transmission on Freeview.
ITV4, a digital channel aimed at men, is launched in the UK.[89] It is launched on Sky Digital Channel 120 on 7 November after airing on the Men & Motors channel space for a few days.[90]
11 November – EastEnders is the first British drama to feature a two-minute silence. This episode later goes on to win the British Soap Award for 'Best Single Episode'.[92]
17 November – Little Britain moves to BBC1 due to it being a success on BBC3, kicking things off with the first episode of the third series. Tom Baker provides this evening's continuity announcements on BBC1.
It is announced that Five has bought a stake in DTT's pay-TV operator, Top Up TV.[95]
22 November – Producers of ITV's I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! confirm that contestant Elaine Lordan will not be returning to the show following a stay in hospital. She had twice collapsed on the set of the jungle-based reality show, but has been given a clean bill of health by doctors.[96]
28 November – The actress and I'm a Celebrity contestant Kimberley Davies is taken to hospital with a suspected fractured rib after she is injured in a stunt that goes wrong. Davies had jumped from a helicopter as part of one of the series' "bush tucker trials" when the incident occurred. Responding to criticism that it had not taken the correct safety precautions, ITV says that Davies was given a full safety briefing before she performed the stunt.[97]
29 November – Kimberley Davies withdraws from I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here![98]
2 December – BBC Three's weeknight news bulletin The 7 O'Clock News is broadcast for the final time. It is axed following a report into the BBC's digital output[99] which claims that the show "achieves nothing and attracts tiny audiences".
3 December – ITV1 screens the British terrestrial television premiere of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the second film in the Harry Potter series. Overnight viewing figures indicate it is watched by an audience of eight million (a 37% audience share). The evening's edition of The X Factor, screened after Chamber of Secrets, is watched by 9.7 million viewers (a 42% audience share), giving ITV1 its best ratings since February 2002.[100]
7–16 December – Space Cadets is shown on Channel 4, a hoax reality TV show where the contestants believe they are in a Space Shuttle orbiting Earth, when in fact they are in a set in a disused aircraft hangar in Suffolk.
15 December – Sir Trevor McDonald makes his final ITN news broadcast after over 25 years. As a tribute, the closing theme tune for the News at Ten Thirty tonight is replaced with the News at Ten theme used from 1992 to 1999, McDonald having presented the show during that time.
21 December – The BBC is to trial a three-month experiment in which its Saturday morning schedules for BBC One and BBC Two will be swapped. The changes, taking effect from January 2006, are being implemented because of frequent scheduling changes caused by big events and breaking news stories, and will mean children's programming will be absent from BBC One's Saturday morning lineup for the first time since 1968. This is not enough to save them and the Saturday morning children's programmes will be axed six months later.[107]
A Christmas special of The Two Ronnies Sketchbook[112] recorded on 5 July which, following Ronnie Barker's death on 3 October, forms in part a tribute to him and attracts 7.93M viewers.
