The ITC removes the limit on the value of prizes which can be given away on ITV game shows in the UK (set at £6000 per episode since 1981), paving the way for the big money game shows of the late 1990s and 2000s.
Channel 4 becomes an independent statutory corporation. Under the terms of the Broadcasting Act 1990 the channel is now also allowed to sell its own airtime. Under the Act ITV have agreed to fund Channel 4 if it falls below 14% of total TV advertising revenue. The channel also makes a payment of £38m to ITV under terms of its funding formula.[1]
The London News Network, a joint venture between London's two franchise holders, Carlton and LWT, begins providing s seven day news service for ITV viewers in London.
Scottish Television launches new idents and presentation.[2]
Ulster Television's news service is renamed UTV Live. The programme broadcasts for 60 minutes, instead of 30.
The BBC launches Business Breakfast as a 60-minute stand-alone programme. It had previously been part of Breakfast News. Consequently, the BBC's weekday breakfast programmes start half an hour earlier, at 6 am.
6 January –
The Times reports that IFE have revised and increased their offer to purchase former ITV franchise holder TVS.[4][5]
Debut of Clive James' acclaimed series Fame in the 20th Century, an eight-part BBC1 series in which James examines the nature of 20th century fame using archive footage and commentary.[7] The series concludes on 24 February.[8]
8 January –
ITV screens the present series of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends once more. However, the first few episodes will be trimmed to fit the timeslot.
ITV debuts its children's comedy programme ZZZap! starring the show you how its done gloves known as the Handymen, Richard Waites as the trouble causing Cuthbert Lilly and the sneaky villain Tricky Dicky and Neil Buchanan as the smartest artist Smart Arty.
ITV introduces a third weekly episode of The Bill on Friday evenings.
7 February – Having completed its initial run of all 692 episodes of Prisoner: Cell Block H in December 1991, Central Television begins re-running the series from the first episode. It is shown weekly, late on Sunday evenings, until the end of 1994.
12–14 February – Channel 4 airs Love Weekend, a series of programmes with sexually explicit content coinciding with Valentine's Day weekend. The weekend includes the British television debut of Last Tango in Paris, which is aired uncut on 14 February.[12] The makers of Tango pay almost £20,00 for a 30-second commercial advertising the soft drink in the film's first ad break.[13]
27 February – "Boiling Point", an episode of the BBC medical drama series Casualty,[17] is met with great controversy and outrage after it depicts rioting youths setting fire to a hospital's accident and emergency department. The Corporation receives over 700 complaints about the violent nature of the episode, despite showing it after the watershed (at 21:00) and warning viewers accordingly. However, the episode achieves viewing figures of 17.02 million – the highest for the show at the time.
Screensport and Eurosport merge. Consequently, Screensport closes down. They merge to try to turn two loss making channels into a single profitable channel.[22]
12 March – BBC1 airs Total Relief, the 1993 Comic Relief telethon.[23]
23–24 March – Sky One transmits Episodes 170 and 171 of Australian soap E Street, which features a hard-hitting storyline involving extreme character Sonny Bennett (Richard Huggett), who kills three characters in a car-bomb explosion. Because the series is aired in an early evening timeslot these episodes are preceded by a warning to viewers that they contain scenes that some may find upsetting. The 12.30pm repeat the following day (24 and 25 March) is dropped entirely and replaced by episodes of The Simpsons.
26 March – ITV airs "The Final Straw", an episode of The Bill in which Detective Constable Viv Martella (played by Nula Conwell) is killed off when she is shot by a gunman after approaching his car.
27 March – BBC1 airs the British television premiere of Eddie Murphy's gangster comedy Harlem Nights.
3 April – The 1993 Grand National is declared void after 30 of the 39 runners begin the race, and carry on despite there having been a false start.
4 April – Children's BBC begin to repeat the children's drama series Grange Hill from its first series in 1978, on Sunday mornings on BBC2, as part of the show's 15th anniversary celebrations. These repeats end in 1999 with series 16, Prior to the repeats, Rugrats begins showing on the same date.[24][25]
5 April – The Children's Channel rebrands with a new series of idents depicting the live-action shots that showing the colours of blue, red and yellow, and also updates its new logo similar to the original one.
6 April – BBC1 airs This Is Michael Bolton, a recording of Michael Bolton in concert.[26]
13 April – A new look is introduced across all of the BBC's television news bulletins, with a studio that is almost entirely computer-generated and features a cut-glass model of the Corporation's coat of arms.
17 April –
BBC1 airs the final edition of its magazine programme, Going Live!.[27]
Arena presents a new four-part series "Tales of Rock 'N' Roll" on BBC2 looking at the story of four rock songs of how they came about and the history behind them and who and what they involved. Starting with Peggy Sue who was tracked down in Sacramento, California to be found running her own drain-clearing company Rapid Rooter and then to be taken back to Lubbock, Texas to recall how she knew Buddy Holly and how her marriage to drummer Jerry Allison turned out. Heartbreak Hotel where the song came to be written after the two songwriters discovered an article about a suicide in a hotel in Miami after reading about it in the Miami Herald. Walk on the Wild Side looks at all the characters that were involved in the song and how Lou Reed used to spend time at Andy Warhol's studio where they all did (Holly Woodlawn & Joe Dallesandro were the only ones still around to tell the tale) and Highway 61 Revisited which looked at Bob Dylan's roots and everything that was connected with U.S. Route 61. The series ran for four weeks on Saturday nights on 17 April, 24 April, 1 May, and 8 May.
Episode 1681 of Neighbours which is the first episode does not to feature the 80s style titles and theme music is shown in the United Kingdom, having previously made its debut in Australia on 18 May 1992.
Debut of Peak Practice on ITV, was one of their most successful medical drama series at the time. It originally starred Kevin Whately as Dr Jack Kerruish, Amanda Burton as Dr Beth Glover and Simon Shepherd as Dr Will Preston, though the roster of doctors would change many times over the course of the series. The series was axed on 30 January 2002, ending on a literal cliffhanger when two of the series' main characters plunged off a cliff.
13 May – Peter Dean makes his final appearance as EastEnders market trader Pete Beale. The character goes on the run with an old flame who he had reconnected with, only to discover she was married to a local gangster. Pete is killed off-screen on 16 December after the couple are killed in a car crash.
19 May – After ten years and ten series in its original run, the final edition of Blockbusters is showing for the last time on ITV. But it continued for one more series on the satellite channel Sky One a year later, and the five ITV regions showed this series until 1995.
22 May – Stars in Their Eyes returns with a new presenter. Matthew Kelly takes on the role from Leslie Crowther, who is still recovering from head injuries received in a car crash the previous year.
27 May – Final showing of the five-part BBC SchoolsFrench language adventure series La Marée et ses Secrets (The Tide and its Secrets), which first aired in 1984.[32][33]
June
4 June –
When Roy Hattersley fails to appear for that day's edition of Have I Got News for You — the third time he has cancelled at the last minute — he is replaced with a tub of lard (credited as "The Rt. Hon. Tub of Lard MP"), as it is "imbued with much the same qualities and liable to give a similar performance".[34]
At 6 pm, UTV unveils a new logo. A new jingle is also introduced with a distinct Celtic sound.[35]
6 June – The Animals of Farthing Wood makes its television debut in the Republic of Ireland on RTÉ. It still airs on television in this country to this very day.
11 June – Fawlty Towers begins its first transmission on Namibian television channel NBC in Namibia.
11–13 June – Channel 4 airs the final three episodes of Cheers over three consecutive nights, finishing with the 80 minute finale. However, due to the series' popularity repeats of the series begin from the following weekend.[36]
28 June – Channel 4 airs the last programmes produced for the ITV Schools strand. However, the channel continues to produce its own schools programming for several years afterwards.
July
1 July – The two production companies, Tiger Television and Aspect Film and Television, merge to form Tiger Aspect Productions.
4 July – Derek Johns wins the 1993 series of MasterChef.
9 July –
BBC1 airs the final episode of Eldorado.[37] The soap was axed due to poor ratings.
ITV finishes repeating the present series of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. One episode, "Thomas and Percy's Christmas Adventure", has been excluded from this year's series of repeats.
23 July – Prime Minister John Major gives an interview to ITN journalist Michael Brunson after his government wins a vote of confidence in the House of Commons earlier in the day. During an unguarded moment following the interview, and while still being recorded, Major refers to some of his cabinet colleagues as "Bastards".[40] The incident, which becomes known in the media as "Bastardgate", prompts the tabloid newspapers Daily Mirror and The Sun to set up telephone lines with recordings of the conversation that readers are invited to call. Both newspapers are warned to discontinue the lines by the regulatory body, the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services (ICSTIS) because it feels that broadcasting the off-air conversation is a breach of privacy.[41]
24 July – The fourth series of ITV's Stars in Their Eyes concludes with the programme's first live Grand Final, enabling viewers to vote for their favourite act. The series is won by Jacquii Cann, performing as Alison Moyet.
July – The ITC publishes the findings of a technical review of the future viability of launching a fifth television channel. By October more than 70 parties have responded to its publication, including some expressing interest in running Channel 5 should the licence be readvertised.[42]
18 August – ITV airs 15: The Life and Death of Philip Knight, Peter Kosminsky's film about a teen, jailed in an adult prison, who took his own life in July 1990.
27 August – BBC1 airs a special live edition of Challenge Anneka in which Anneka Rice returns to some of the projects the show worked on to check on their progress.[45]
Sky Multichannels launches in the UK. Consequently, many satellite free-to-air channels become pay channels. Three new channels launch – The Family Channel, Nickelodeon UK, and UK Living – and all become part of the Sky Multichannels package.
The IFE launched The Family Channel is based at The Maidstone Studios and uses some elements of the TVS programme archive. Flextech are a partner in the venture, taking a 39% stake in the business.[48]
6 September – UK Gold introduces a new ident with the form-up of the first logo against a silky blue background, replacing the "Goldie" idents.
11 September – Sky One moves E Street from its weekday early evening slot to a weekend daytime slot, where it is shown in hour-long episodes on Saturdays from 6.00pm to 7.00pm and Sundays from 1.00pm to 2.00pm. The weekday 6.30pm slot is used to air episodes of Paradise Beach, but E Street is restored to the weekday slot in January 1994 after the move proves to be unpopular.
17 September – Cartoon Network and classic movie channel TNT launch in the UK. They share the same transponder with Cartoon Network broadcasting during the day and TNT transmitting during the evening and overnight,
22 September – BBC1 airs "Hostage", an edition of the Inside Story strand in which Terry Waite speaks about his years of captivity in Beirut.[50]
24 September – A five-minute animated cartoon series for preschoolers Philbert Frog screens on BBC1.
September – Scottish Television reschedules Emmerdale from 19:00 to 17:10, and uses the 19:00 slot to broadcast daily regional programmes, including Take the High Road. This arrangement continues until early 1998 when Emmerdale is moved back to the 19:00 slot.
October
1 October – QVC UK launches in the United Kingdom, becoming the UK's first home shopping channel. The channel had originally launched in the United States in 1986.
19 October – Last on screen appearance of Roly, the EastEnders dog and Queen Vic resident who has been part of the soap since the first episode. Roly is killed off, the episode featuring his demise attracting an audience of 14.8 million viewers. The dog who played Roly died during a heatwave on 2 August 1995.
The ITC issues Channel 4 with a formal warning for an episode of the soap Brookside aired on 7 and 8 May, which depicted a wife stabbing her abusive husband to death.[53]
21 October – Channel 4 is granted permission by the High Court to show excerpts from Stanley Kubrick's controversial 1971 film A Clockwork Orange as part of its Without Walls series. The film, Forbidden Fruit, is shown on 26 October. Time Warner, distributors of A Clockwork Orange had sought to prevent Channel 4 from showing scenes from the film, which has been banned in the UK since 1973 after Kubrick withdrew it amid concerns it was encouraging violence, and remained until 2000.[54]
7 November – American animated television series based on the popular Sega video games Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog begins on Channel 4 two months after its US television debut.
8 November – The first TV advert for an undertaker's is broadcast during an early evening episode of Scottish soap opera Take the High Road on ITV.
9 November – The first edition of It'll Never Work?, a children's television programme showcasing new inventions and developments in scientific technology, debuts on BBC1.[56]
Several schoolchildren are killed in a minibus crash on the M40. The incident is carried as the lead story on ITV's Early Evening News and News at Ten, while the BBC's flagship Nine O'Clock News carries it as the third item, behind the State Opening of Parliament and a piece about the Troubles. The BBC's decision to put the item third attracts strong criticism from other journalists, who question the reasoning behind it, and accuse the BBC of being out of touch.[57]
19 November – Channel 4 airs the first "Late Licence" which sees it on air on Friday and Saturday nights until around 5.00am. The first "Late Licence" is presented by Smashie and Nicey with the strand showing repeats of the channel's content, such as editions of The Word.[36]
22 November – On the 30th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Channel 4 airs the documentary As It Happened: The Killing of Kennedy which gives a minute-by-minute account of the events of 22 November 1963, with contributions from scores of eyewitnesses.[59]
23 November – 30th anniversary of the first broadcast of Doctor Who in the UK.
26–27 November – BBC 1 airs the two-part Doctor Who special Dimensions in Time, a crossover with EastEnders. The episode is part of the 1993 Children in Need telethon, and the first Doctor Who episode to be televised since the series ended in December 1989.[60][61]
29 November –
The Krypton Factor broadcasts on ITV for the final time after 16 years, it will returned two years later with co-host Penny Smith.
6 December – ITV's North West franchise-holder Granada Television launches a hostile takeover for London Weekend Television, worth £600 million. The takeover bid comes about because of the relaxation of the rules governing the ITV Network. LWT tries to outstep the takeover bid by initiating talks with Yorkshire Television and Scottish Television.[64]
9 December – Peter Sissons hosts his last edition of Question Time,[65] having chaired the political debate programme since 1989.
13 December – The Times reports that a conflict of words has broken out between London Weekend Television and Granada over LWT's talks with Yorkshire Television. Granada claims the YTV-LWT deal is "something cobbled together by desperate men". Gerry Robinson, the Chairman of Granada plc, is dismissive of the deal, especially since Yorkshire has made £10 million loss and is already paying much of its revenue to the government. Reports also suggest if LWT bid for Yorkshire Television it would also form an alliance with Anglia who would takeover Tyne Tees Television.[66]
22 December – Plato's Stepchildren, an episode of the US sci-fi TV series Star Trek is shown on BBC 2 for the first time in the UK having not been seen on British television since the series' original run on BBC1.[68][69]
The Times reports that Granada has increased its takeover bid for LWT to £658 million.[74]
Episodes of Emmerdale featuring the controversial plane crash storyline begin airing on ITV. The storyline was developed to win higher ratings for the series, which was threatened with cancellation due to low viewing figures. However, although it succeeded in turning around the fortunes of the series, ITV received many complaints about the timing of the story which came shortly after the fifth anniversary of the Lockerbie Disaster.
^Borrill, Rachel; Foley, Michael (3 November 1993). "Major seeks review of ban on NI terror group interviews". The Irish Times. The Irish Times Trust. p. 6.
^"It'll Never Work". 4 November 1993. p. 89. Retrieved 19 January 2019 – via BBC Genome.
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The Animals of Farthing Wood (1993–1995)
McGee and Me! (1989–1995)
Tales of the Tooth Fairies (1992)
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Moomin (1990–1991)
The Adventures of Blinky Bill (1994)
Only an Excuse? (1993–present)
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Shortland Street (1992–present)
The Sands of Time (1992)
