| Date | Event |
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| January 3 | The first television sets with built-in closed-caption display are introduced in the United States. |
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| January 14 | Wheel of Fortune returns to NBC (but would ultimately be canceled on September 20, after a 16½ year run on daytime network television). |
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| January 16 | All major television network schedules are pre-empted by Gulf War coverage right after the evening news broadcasts. The planned broadcasts included Seinfeld . |
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| January 19 | NBC breaks away [1] [2] from their telecast of the NHL All-Star Game in the third period [3] to televise a briefing from The Pentagon involving the Gulf War. SportsChannel America [4] [5] included the missing coverage in a replay of NBC's telecast (NBC owned 50% [6] [7] [8] [9] of Rainbow Enterprises, the parent of SportsChannel America). [10] |
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| January 25 | Steve Urkel of Family Matters makes a guest appearance on Full House . |
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| January 27 | Whitney Houston delivers a rousing rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" during the pre-game ceremonies for Super Bowl XXV. During halftime, ABC broadcast a special ABC News report anchored by Peter Jennings on the progress of the Gulf War. ABC eventually aired the halftime show, headlined by New Kids on the Block on tape delay following the game. |
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| February 7 | NBC broadcasts an episode of L.A. Law which features the first in a series of "lesbian kiss episodes", in which a lesbian or bisexual character (in this case, C.J. Lamb) kisses a female character identified as heterosexual (here, Abby Perkins). |
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| February 9 | Tim Meadows and Adam Sandler join the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live . (Meadows stays with the show until 2000, while Sandler departs during 1995.) |
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| February 22 | Deborah Norville co-anchors NBC's The Today Show for the final time. Going on maternity leave, she is replaced by Katie Couric, who stays a Today anchor into the early 21st century. |
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| March 3 | In Los Angeles, California, African-American Rodney King is beaten severely by police officers after leading them on a high-speed chase and allegedly resisting arrest. A video is made by an observer, and portions of the tape are broadcast repeatedly, resulting in massive rioting in the Los Angeles area. |
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| March 16 | A. Whitney Brown makes his final appearance on the program Saturday Night Live . |
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| March 21 | An episode of L.A. Law features Diana Muldaur's character Rosalind Shays plummeting to her death through an open elevator shaft. |
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| April 1 | The premium movie channel Encore launches in the United States, primarily on TCI cable systems. The channel initially displayed movies from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, before eventually phasing in more recent movies by the 2000s (decade). Showtime Networks initiated Flix, a premium channel with a format identical to Encore less than a year-and-a-half later. |
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| CBS begins broadcasting a late-night crime-investigation program block entitled Crimetime After Primetime . |
| HBO and Viacom agree to merge their respective comedy channels, Ha! and The Comedy Channel to create CTV: The Comedy Network, later known as Comedy Central come June 1991. |
| April 5 | Katie Couric is designated as co-host of The Today Show on NBC after substituting as host since February 1991. |
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| April 20 | The Museum of Broadcasting, now known as The Paley Center for Media, relocates into its new 17-story building, located a block from its previous location in New York City. |
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| An episode of Saturday Night Live guest hosted by actor Steven Seagal immediately becomes infamous due to Seagal being difficult and uncooperative to work with among the cast and crew. Seagal is soon banned from ever appearing on the series again and is branded by SNL creator and producer Lorne Michaels as the "worst host ever". |
| May 3 | The final episode of Dallas is broadcast by CBS; the series is eventually revived in 2012 on TNT. |
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| May 9 | After being diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer in April 1991, Michael Landon appears as a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson . Landon would succumb to the disease seven weeks later at the age of 54. |
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| May 13 | Delta Burke makes her final appearance as Suzanne Sugarbaker on Designing Women . |
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| May 22 | Tulsa's television station KGCT-TV returns to the air as KTFO-TV. |
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| May 23 | WFXG in Augusta, Georgia signs-on as a Fox affiliate, taking that affiliation from W67BE (now NBC affiliate WAGT-CD) which becomes an independent station. |
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| At an NBC network affiliate managers meeting at New York City's Carnegie Hall, Johnny Carson announces that he will be stepping down as host of The Tonight Show within May of the following year. |
| May 25 | The syndicated sitcom Out of This World concludes its fourth and ultimately final season on an unresolved cliffhanger involving Evie's alien father Troy coming to visit Earth and her mother Donna accidentally taking his place on his home planet, Antares Prime. |
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| June 1 | After merging with Ha! and The Comedy Channel. CTV: The Comedy Network becomes Comedy Central. This is to avoid confusion with the Canadian broadcast network known as CTV. |
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| June 2–12 | NBC broadcasts the NBA Finals for the first time after the event aired on CBS for the previous 17 years. It was Michael Jordan's first NBA Finals appearance, Magic Johnson's last, and the last NBA Finals for the Los Angeles Lakers until 2000. This series would mark the end of the Lakers' Showtime era and the beginning of the Chicago Bulls' dynasty. |
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| June 3 | The Australian soap Neighbours makes its American debut, on KCOP-TV in Los Angeles, CA. Two weeks later, WWOR-TV debuts this for its New York, NY market. |
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| Scripps-Howard Broadcasting finalizes the purchase on Baltimore's NBC affiliate WMAR-TV from Gillett Communications, which was about to be divested into SCI television. |
| July 9 | The Major League Baseball All-Star Game airs on CBS for the second consecutive year. Emanating from Toronto, it is the second time that the All-Star Game is played outside of the United States, the first being the 1982 All-Star Game in Montreal, Quebec. CBS started their broadcast at the top of the hour with the customary pregame coverage. Because American President George H.W. Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney were throwing out the first ball, there was a slight delay from the 8:30 p.m. EDT start. The game eventually started about 15–20 minutes late. |
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| July 28 | NBC airs a pilot for a proposed series starring Adam West and written and produced by Conan O'Brien and Robert Smigel called Lookwell . While the pilot ultimately wouldn't be picked up as a series, it has since become a cult classic. |
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| August 2 | Deidre Hall returns on-screen to the NBC soap opera Days of Our Lives after a four-year absence in which her character, Marlena Evans is revealed to be mysteriously alive and kept hidden outside of Salem after being presumed dead in an accident nearly four years prior. |
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| August 11 | Nickelodeon introduces its series of Nicktoons, with Doug , Rugrats and The Ren & Stimpy Show the first three to air. [11] |
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| WGMB-TV in Baton Rouge, Louisiana signs-on the air, giving the Baton Rouge area its first full-time Fox affiliate (NBC affiliate WVLA had previously aired Fox programming on a delayed basis). |
| August 13 | The time slot for Full House was moved from Friday's TGIF lineup on ABC to Tuesday nights (remaining there until its finale in 1995). |
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| September 1 | KLSB-TV in Nacogdoches, Texas signs-on as a satellite of the Tyler market's NBC affiliate KETK-TV. KLSB-TV will eventually become the market's CBS affiliate in 2004 when the station is sold to Max Media. |
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| September 6 | KLNO (now MyNetworkTV affiliate KBVO) in Llano, Texas is signed-on by NBC affiliate KXAN-TV to improve coverage of that station in parts of the Texas Hill Country. |
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| September 8 | Minnie Pearl makes her final appearance on the program Hee Haw . |
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| September 9–13 | The 20th anniversary week of The Price Is Right is celebrated during this week on CBS. |
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| September 9 | After being fired from World Championship Wrestling following a contract dispute, Ric Flair makes his World Wrestling Federation debut on Prime Time Wrestling with the "Big Gold Belt". |
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| September 19 | Michael Jackson (credited as John Jay Smith) guest voices on The Simpsons . |
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| September 23 | Over a year after its cancelation from NBC, Baywatch is relaunched in first–run syndication, where it will run for ten seasons. |
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| September 25 | Leonardo DiCaprio joins the cast of Growing Pains for what would be its final season. |
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| September 29 | Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video debuts on MTV's 120 Minutes . |
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| October 6 | On the Major League Baseball Game of the Week on CBS, the Atlanta Braves cap off their "worst to first" season by defeating the Houston Astros to clinch their first divisional title in nine years. |
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| October 11 | Redd Foxx suffers a fatal heart attack on the set of the CBS sitcom The Royal Family . [12] [13] It was noted that initially cast mates on set thought Foxx was only fooling around after he clutched a chair and fell to the floor, since his character on Sanford and Son often faked heart attacks. [14] |
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| October 13 | Jennifer Lopez joins the cast as one of the Fly Girls on the Fox sketch comedy series In Living Color (she would leave the show after the next season). Other cast additions include future Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx and Steve Park (who left after the season ended). Shawn Wayans, the original DJ for the show, also becomes a regular cast member (and will remain in the cast until the end of the next season). Wayans' original DJ role is assumed by Twist. |
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| October 19–27 | The World Series between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves airs on CBS. With five of its games decided by a single run, four decided in the final at-bat, and three going into extra innings, [15] this World Series immediately became regarded as one of the greatest postseason series in baseball history. In 2003, ESPN selected this championship as the "Greatest of All Time" in their "World Series 100th Anniversary" countdown. The Series telecast drew an overall national Nielsen rating of 24.0 and a 39 share for CBS; Game 7 drew a 32.2 rating and 49 share. |
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| October 20–22 | ABC airs the four-hour miniseries Dynasty: The Reunion , which continues the story of 1981–1989 prime time soap opera Dynasty . |
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| October 24 | Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry dies at the age of 70. After his death, Star Trek: The Next Generation airs a two-part episode of season five, called "Unification", which features a dedication to Roddenberry. [16] |
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| October 25 | NBC's affiliate in Raleigh/Durham/Fayetteville, WPTF-TV, changes its name to WRDC-TV. |
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| October 26 | In front of a national television audience on CBS, play-by-play man Jack Buck famously says "And we'll see you tomorrow night!" while calling Minnesota Twins star Kirby Puckett's game-winning home run to send the World Series against the Atlanta Braves to a decisive seventh game. |
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| October 29 | Turner Broadcasting System and Apollo Investment Fund purchase the Hanna-Barbera library for $320 million. |
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| October 31 | KLSR-TV in Eugene, Oregon signs-on, giving Fox a full-power home in the Eugene market. Sister station K25AS (now MyNetworkTV affiliate KEVU-CD) becomes an independent station before joining UPN in 1995. |
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| November 4–11 | Leonard Nimoy guest stars as Spock in a two-part episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation . The first of the two episodes earn a 15.4 household Nielsen rating, [17] drawing over 25 million viewers, [18] making it one of the most watched episodes in all seven seasons of The Next Generation's run. |
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| November 6 | The fourth installment of the Gambler film series is broadcast on NBC. The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw features Kenny Rogers' character Brady Hawkes running across a galaxy of old TV western characters played by the original actors. This includes Gene Barry as Bat Masterson, Hugh O'Brian as Wyatt Earp, Jack Kelly as Bart Maverick, Clint Walker as Cheyenne Bodie, David Carradine as Kung Fu 's Caine, Chuck Connors and Johnny Crawford from The Rifleman , Brian Keith as The Westerner, James Drury and Doug McClure from The Virginian , Paul Brinegar from Rawhide , and Reba McEntire as Burgundy Jones. |
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| November 7 | In a nationally televised press conference, NBA superstar Magic Johnson announces that he is HIV-positive and is retiring from the Los Angeles Lakers, effective immediately. Johnson would appear as a guest on The Arsenio Hall Show the very next night. |
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| November 9 | Hurricane Saturday , a one-off programming block of a three-way, two-hour crossover event airs on NBC. It involves three television sitcoms created by Susan Harris: The Golden Girls , Empty Nest and Nurses . The event depicts a fictional hurricane storming into the storylines of the three series set in Miami, Florida. |
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| November 14 | The music video for "Black or White", the first single from Michael Jackson's forthcoming eighth album Dangerous , is first televised by Fox. Despite controversy over the video's ending, Fox, which simulcasts the video along with MTV, VH1, and BET, scores its highest Nielsen ratings to date. [19] |
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| November 16 | Ellen Cleghorne, Melanie Hutsell and Beth Cahill join the cast of Saturday Night Live . |
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| KTMF in Missoula, Montana signs-on the air, giving the Missoula market its first full-time ABC affiliate. |
| November 23 | An hour long television special commemorating the 19th anniversary of The Bob Newhart Show airs on CBS. |
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| November 28 | E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial makes its broadcast network television premiere on CBS. |
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| December 1 | Britney Spears appears on the program Star Search . |
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| December 8 | Tim Russert becomes moderator of the NBC discussion program Meet the Press , a job he possesses until his sudden death in 2008. |
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| December 14 | Steve Martin kicks off Saturday Night Live by singing "Not Gonna Phone It In Tonight!". |
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