The year 1965 in television involved some significant events.
Below is a list of television-related events in 1965.
Events
January 1 - Comedian Soupy Sales, who hosted the "Lunch With Soupy Sales" children's program on New York City's WNEW-TV, encourages his young viewers to send him money ("those funny little green pieces of paper with pictures of U.S. presidents") from their parents' pants and pocketbooks and send them to him, and in return he would "send you a postcard from Puerto Rico!"[1] Days later, when he actually got response, he declared that he was joking and that cash contributions would be donated to charity, but WNEW suspended Sales for two weeks over the incident.[2]
March 24 – Live TV pictures from the US unmanned moon probe Ranger 9 are transmitted prior to its impact.
April 5 – TEN10 opens in Sydney, Australia, with the highlight of the opening night being the variety special TV Spells Magic.
April 15 – Paul Bryan (Ben Gazzara) gets bad news from his doctor and sets out to do all the things he never had time for, in the Kraft Suspense Theatre episode entitled "Rapture at Two-Forty." This will serve as the pilot for the series Run for Your Life, which will premiere on September 13 and run until 1968.
April 21 – The Beach Boys appear on Shindig! performing their most recent hit, "Do You Wanna Dance?"
April 26 - Brazil's largest TV network, Rede Globo, begins broadcasting.
April 28 – My Name Is Barbra, Barbra Streisand's first TV special, airs on CBS.
June 4 – The launch of the Gemini 4 space mission is broadcast in color by NBC. All three networks would carry the launch of Gemini 5 in color that August and all subsequent manned space launches.
August 1 – Cigarette adverts are banned from UK television, though pipe tobacco and cigar adverts continue until 1992.
August 6 – BBC withdraws a planned airing of The War Game on BBC1's Wednesday Play anthology series; the network, officially, deems the film's depiction of a fictional nuclear attack on the United Kingdom and its aftermath as "too horrifying" to air on television, though it was widely believed that government pressure led to the banning. The film would win the 1966 Academy Award for Documentary Feature, and BBC would not screen the film on-air until 1985.
The Beatles appear on The Ed Sullivan Show, for the fourth & final time, performing songs from their new album Help!. This appearance was videotaped on August 14 before the group launched their U.S. tour the following night at Shea Stadium (Sunday, August 15, 1965).
October 4 – Pope Paul VI's visit to New York receives saturation television coverage on all 3 American networks. The Papal Mass at Yankee Stadium is broadcast in color.
October 17 – WBMG-TV in Birmingham, Alabama launches on channel 42, sharing dual CBS/NBC affiliation with crosstown WAPI-TV—and allowing viewers in the Birmingham market to watch more programming from those networks that WAPI did not have room for (including The Ed Sullivan Show, The CBS Evening News, and The Tonight Show). The setup lasts until 1970, when WAPI takes sole affiliation with NBC and WBMG does the same with CBS. At the same time, WCFT-33 in Tuscaloosa and WHMA-40 in Anniston become exclusive affiliates of CBS. Like WBMG, Channels 33 and 40 were dual affiliates of NBC and CBS.
Three independently-affiliated stations in the Philadelphia market—The "Other Big 3 in Philly"—start operations: WIBF (channel 29) opens on May 16; WKBS-TV (channel 48) opens on September 1 (and operates until 1983); and WPHL-TV (channel 17) opens on September 17.
Motorola introduces the first successful rectangular tube color TV to the mass market.
Jeopardy! moves to 12:00 noon on NBC, which would make the show a hit on the network for many years.