1956 in Television - Events

Events

  • January 28 – Elvis Presley makes his national television debut on CBS on Stage Show, the first of six appearances on the series.
  • February 17 – The English Midlands becomes the first part of the UK outside London to receive ITV, when ATV Midlands begins broadcasting their weekday franchise. The weekend franchise, ABC, appears a day later.
  • February – U.M.&M. T.V. Corp. acquires the pre-October 1950 Paramount Pictures cartoons and theatrical shorts, except for the Popeye and Superman cartoons.
  • April 2 – As the World Turns and The Edge of Night premiere on CBS as the first half-hour American soap operas. Previously, all soaps had been just fifteen minutes in length.
  • April 3 – Elvis Presley appears on The Milton Berle Show.
  • April – WNBQ (now WMAQ-TV) in Chicago becomes the first TV station to broadcast all its local programming in color.
  • April 14- Ampex demonstrates a videotape recorder at the 1956 NARTB (now NAB) convention in Chicago, Illinois. It was the demonstration of the first practical and commercially successful videotape format known as 2" Quadruplex. The three networks place orders for the recorders.
  • May 3 – Granada Television begins broadcasting, extending ITV's coverage to Northern England. ABC's weekend franchise appears two days later.
  • May 6 – Elvis Presley appears on The Milton Berle Show.
  • 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.
  • July 1 – Elvis Presley appears on The Steve Allen Show.
  • August 6 – Final telecast of the DuMont Network. The US would not have a fourth major network until the birth 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 for the first time.
  • September 16 – TCN-9 Sydney becomes the first Australian TV station to begin regular transmission.
  • October 1 – Ernie Kovacs becomes the host for NBC's The Tonight Show on Mondays and Tuesdays.
  • October 29 – 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.
  • October 29 – Chet Huntley and David Brinkley take over anchor duties of the NBC evening newscast, which is renamed The Huntley-Brinkley Report.
  • November 3 – The 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz is shown on television for the first time in the US, on CBS (the viewing audience was estimated at 45 million people).
  • November 5 – The Australian Broadcasting Corporation makes its first TV broadcast from its Sydney studios. It is inaugurated by then-Prime Minister Robert Menzies.
  • November 19 – The Australian Broadcasting Corporation begins broadcast in Melbourne. Along with its Sydney counterpart, they air the 1956 Summer Olympics.
  • November – The first use of videotape on 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.
  • Television broadcasting begins in Spain and Uruguay.
  • Black-and-white portable TV sets hit the market.
  • December 31 – Former Game Show host Bob Barker makes his national TV debut on Truth or Consequences.

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    “Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.”
    —Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)

    “Whatever events in progress shall disgust men with cities, and infuse into them the passion for country life, and country pleasures, will render a service to the whole face of this continent, and will further the most poetic of all the occupations of real life, the bringing out by art the native but hidden graces of the landscape.”
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    “It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgement.”
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