| Date | Event | Ref. |
|---|
| January 31 | CBS broadcasts The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman , a multi-Emmy-winning adaptation of Ernest J. Gaines’ novel of the same name which follows the 110-year life of a former slave from the American Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement. Cicely Tyson is tapped to play the title role. |
| February 1 | KIVI-TV signs-on the air, giving the Boise market its first full-time ABC affiliate. |
| February 8 | After 20 years and 5,195 episodes, The Secret Storm ends its run on CBS’s daytime schedule. Ten days later, the show is replaced by Tattletales , a Bert Convy-hosted game show that is devoted to celebrity gossip. |
| March 11 | The children's special Free to Be... You and Me , produced by comedic actress Marlo Thomas, airs on ABC. |
| March 13 | The Execution of Private Slovik , a made-for-TV film telling the story of Pvt. Eddie Slovik, the only American soldier to be executed for desertion after the American Civil War, airs on NBC. |
| March 18 | CBS's cancellation of Here's Lucy marks the end of the television reign of Lucille Ball, which lasted 23 consecutive years beginning with the 1951 premiere of I Love Lucy . |
| March | Chuck Scarbarough joins WNBC-TV and revamps its format as NewsCenter 4, signaling the debut of the NewsCenter format. | [1] |
| April 5 | The Dean Martin Show ends its run on NBC after 264 hour-long episodes. NBC will continue to air periodic editions of The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast over the next 10 years. |
| April 26 | KPVI signs-on the air, giving the Idaho Falls market its first full-time ABC affiliate. |
| July 15 | Christine Chubbuck, a television reporter for WXLT in Sarasota, Florida commits suicide via a gunshot from behind her right ear during a live newscast on Suncoast Digest. | [2] [3] [4] |
| August 8 | U.S. President Richard Nixon announces his pending resignation live on television, effective at 12 Noon EDT the next day, at which time Vice President Gerald Ford is sworn in as President. |
| WEVU (now WZVN-TV) signs-on the air, giving the Fort Myers market its first full-time ABC affiliate. |
| August 25 | Al Ham's music theme Part of Your Life made its debut on WBTV-TV in Charlotte. | [5] |
| September 10 | Born Innocent , a controversial film starring Linda Blair, airs on NBC. The film, which involved a fourteen-year-old being sent to what the television preview deemed a women's prison (when in reality it was a reform school), drew heavy criticism due to an all-female rape scene, the first ever seen on American television. The scene was deleted in subsequent re-airings after a group of girls assaulted an eight-year-old with a pop bottle, influenced by the scene in the film. |
| October 6 | Monty Python's Flying Circus , the British sketch comedy series that aired its final episode this year, is first shown on American television when PBS member station KERA-TV in Dallas, Texas airs it at 10 p.m. Central Daylight Time. [6] [7] |
| November 28 | For the fourth time this year, ABC aligns with a new station as WOPC-TV in Altoona, Pennsylvania brings full-time ABC service to the Altoona-State College market. WOPC-TV struggles for viewers and goes dark in 1982; ABC would return to Altoona (and channel 23) in 1988 when Fox affiliate WWPC-TV (then a satellite of WWCP-TV in Johnstown) breaks from its simulcast with WWCP-TV. |
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