1969 in Television - Events

Events

  • January 4 – NBC expands the Huntley-Brinkley Report to Saturdays, with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley alternating weeks anchoring the news solo. Later, mediocre ratings prompt NBC to replace the duo with other newsmen, with the broadcast rechristened NBC Saturday News.
  • January 13 - Dick York collapses on the set of Bewitched and is rushed to the hospital. He resigns from the show due to health reasons and is replaced by Dick Sargent.
  • February 5 – ABC runs the one and only airing of the notorious flop, Turn-On.
  • February 9 – CBS presents the Royal Shakespeare Company's version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", starring Diana Rigg, David Warner, and Helen Mirren.
  • February 19 – At exactly 4:31 p.m. at the CBS Studio Center, with Jim Nabors saying the line "How interesting – and did she?", Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. shoots its final scene and completes its run.
  • March 29 – Lulu (the singer, not the elephant) performs Boom Bang-a-Bang at the Eurovision Song Contest 1969 in Madrid, and ends up in a 4-way tie for 1st place, with 18 votes.
  • April 4 – CBS bans the Smothers Brothers. Three days later, Walter Cronkite opens the evening newscast by confirming that the Smothers Brothers have been replaced by Hee Haw – effective immediately. But because it takes two months to assemble a typical Hee-Haw segment, CBS has to fill the time period with specials until Hee Haw premieres on June 15.
  • April 11 – Rome, as only he could see it, is presented in Fellini, a Director's Notebook, an NBC special.
  • April 13 – Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore are reunited for a special, Dick Van Dyke and the Other Woman, on CBS.
  • June 3 – The science fiction television series Star Trek airs its final new episode after being canceled by NBC. Its subsequent sale into rerun syndication soon after leads to a rise in popularity that transforms Star Trek into one of the century's most successful entertainment franchises.
  • June 21 – Patrick Troughton makes his last regular appearance as the Second Doctor in the concluding moments of Episode 10 of the Doctor Who serial The War Games. It also marks the final time that the series was broadcast in black and white.
  • Summer – In a surprise announcement, Martin Landau and Barbara Bain announce they are leaving the cast of Mission: Impossible. Landau's replacement is former Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy, while a permanent replacement for Bain would not be chosen until the 1970–71 season.
  • July 3 – An elephant called Lulu runs amok on Blue Peter. The clip is subsequently repeated many times, becoming the archetypal British TV "blooper".
  • July 20 – A live transmission from the Moon is viewed by 720 million people around the world, with the landing of Apollo 11: at 10:56 p.m. EDT on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the surface of the Moon, broadcast live.
  • July 25 – Senator Edward Kennedy goes on TV to talk about the incident at Chappaquiddick.
  • August 14 – Roman Polanski goes on TV to give his take on the Tate-LaBianca murders.
  • August 18 – CBS pits Merv Griffin against Johnny Carson in the late-night talk-show arena. Carson wins.
  • September 1 – TV Globo debuted its first news and current affairs program, Jornal Nacional, which ran Monday through Saturday.
  • September 8 – From now on, all daytime programs on ABC and CBS are in color.
  • September 26 - The Brady Bunch premieres on ABC.
  • October 17 – The Jackson 5 make their national television debut on The Hollywood Palace.
  • November 13 – Vice-President Spiro Agnew, in a televised speech from Des Moines, Iowa, sirs up a national controversy by attacking the network news commentaries.
  • November 12- The animated special Hey, Hey, Hey, It's Fat Albert, based on Bill Cosby's stand up comedy airs on NBC, it would later inspire the Saturday morning cartoon, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.
  • November 15 – Colour introduced to BBC1 and ITV in the UK.
  • November 16 - The Rolling Stones make their final appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
  • December 2 – In tonight's episode of I Dream of Jeannie, Jeannie (Barbara Eden) finally becomes Mrs. Anthony Nelson.
  • December 12 – The Archies' Sugar Sugar Jingle Jangle Christmas Show airs on CBS. It is not a success.
  • December 17 – Tiny Tim gets married on Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show.
  • Canadian broadcaster CBC renames The National News to The National, which remains its title.

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    “Reporters are not paid to operate in retrospect. Because when news begins to solidify into current events and finally harden into history, it is the stories we didn’t write, the questions we didn’t ask that prove far, far more damaging than the ones we did.”
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