The year 1956 in television involved some significant events.
Below is a list of television-related events during 1956.
Events
January 25–February 5 – The 1956 Winter Olympics in Italy are the first to be broadcast to an international audience. The Soviet Union uses its technological influence to broadcast the Cortina Winter Games to a western audience from a communist point of view.
January 28 – Elvis Presley makes his national television debut on CBS in the United States on the program Stage Show, the first of six appearances on the series.
April – WNBQ (modern-day WMAQ-TV) in Chicago becomes the first TV station to broadcast all its local programming in color.
April 14 – Ampex company demonstrates a videotape recorder at the 1956 NARTB (now National Association of Broadcasters) convention in Chicago, Illinois, using the first practical and commercially successful videotape format known as 2" Quadruplex. The three networks place orders for the recorders.
April – United States Senator Estes Kefauver holds congressional hearings on the rising rates of juvenile crime and publishes an article in Reader's Digest named "Let's Get Rid of Tele-Violence."
May 25 – The first Eurovision Song Contest is held in Lugano, Switzerland. It is primarily a radio program at this stage, as few Europeans can afford TV sets.
August 6 – Final telecast of the DuMont Television Network. The United States will not have a fourth major network until the launch of the Fox network in 1986.
September – NBC introduces a still version of its peacock color logo.
September 4 – Television broadcasting begins in Sweden.
September 9 – Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show in the United States for the first time.
September 15 – Gabriel J. Fontana wins a record US$64,000 from the Super Bonus Stunt on Beat the Clock.
September 16 – TCN-9Sydney becomes the first Australian television station to begin regular transmission.
October 1 – Ernie Kovacs becomes the host for NBC's The Tonight Show in the United States on Mondays and Tuesdays.
First use of videotape in network television programming; CBS uses its Ampex VTR to record the evening news, anchored by Douglas Edwards. The tape is then fed to West Coast stations three hours later.
November 3 – The 1939 MGM movie The Wizard of Oz is shown on television for the first time in the United States, by CBS (the viewing audience is estimated at 45 million people).
November 4 - HSV 7 officially inaugurates on the air in Melbourne, Australia, soon after the Australia Commonwealth Government started issuing television licences.
November – The first use of videotape for a network television entertainment program. Jonathan Winters uses videotape and superimposing techniques to be able to play two characters in the same skit for his NBC television show.
December 31 – Game series host Bob Barker makes his national television debut in the United States on the program Truth or Consequences.
September 15 – The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (UK) on ITV (After being sold to the NBC network in the United States, it later becomes the first British television series ever to be made in colour) (1956–57)