1974 in Television - Events

Events

  • January 6 – CKGN-TV begins broadcasting in Brantford, Ontario.
  • January 31 – CBS airs a multi-Emmy-winning adaptation of Ernest J. Gaines' novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, which follows the 110-year life of a former slave from the Civil War to the civil rights movement. Cicely Tyson portrays the title role.
  • February 8 – After 20 years, The Secret Storm airs its 5195th and final episode on CBS Daytime. The show is replaced ten days later by Tattletales, a game show hosted by Bert Convy.
  • 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 airs on NBC. A made for television film, it told the story of Pvt. Eddie Slovik, the only American soldier to be executed for desertion since the American Civil War.
  • April 6 – "Waterloo" wins the Eurovision Song Contest for Sweden and launches ABBA on their stellar global career.
  • May 4 – Steve Frame (George Reinholt) marries Alice Matthews (Jacqueline Courtney) for the second time on a special hour-long broadcast of Another World, coinciding with the show's tenth anniversary.
  • June 8 – Jon Pertwee makes his final regular appearance as the Third Doctor in the concluding moments of Part Six of the Doctor Who serial Planet of the Spiders. Tom Baker briefly appears as the Fourth Doctor at the conclusion of this serial.
  • August 5 – For the first time on a pre-school children's programme, the UK show Inigo Pipkin covers the death of the main character, Inigo, as the actor who played him (George Woodbridge) had died. The show is renamed Pipkins.
  • August 9 – US President Richard Nixon resigns live on television.
  • September 10 – The controversial TV movie Born Innocent, 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.
  • December 28 – Tom Baker makes his first full appearance as the Fourth Doctor in the Doctor Who serial Robot.
  • Monty Python's Flying Circus, the popular British sketch comedy which aired its final episode this year, is first shown in the US on KERA-TV in Dallas, Texas.
  • Meg Dale (Tudi Wiggins) calls her son Ben (Christopher Reeve) a "bastard" on the soap opera Love of Life, the first time a profanity was spoken on American daytime television.
  • US television game show program Match Game is the #1 rated program and #1 rated game show for the second year in a row.

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