Events
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| January 1 | Affiliation swap in Florida. In Miami, channels have been switched 3 places: WTVJ becomes NBC from CBS, WCIX (now WFOR-TV) becomes CBS from Fox, and WSVN becomes Fox from NBC. In West Palm Beach, two stations have been moved altogether, WPEC-TV has switched from ABC to CBS, and WTVX has switched from CBS to become mostly independent. ABC station WPBF signed on for this day. |
| January 9 | Pat Sajak leaves Wheel of Fortune for a CBS late night talk show while remaining on the nighttime version. His daytime hosting role will be taken by Rolf Benirschke, then by Bob Goen when Wheel switches networks from NBC to CBS the following July. |
| February 20 | Falcon Crest star Jane Wyman is rushed to the hospital, after suffering from diabetes and liver ailment. |
| March 2 | Madonna's Like a Prayer for Pepsi debuts on NBC during The Cosby Show. |
| March 24 | For the first time since 1973, NBC reruns a 1960 telecast of Peter Pan, with Mary Martin in the title role. |
| April 8 | David Spade, and Mike Myers join the cast of Saturday Night Live. |
| April 30 | CNBC, the first NBC cable channel and the first financial cable channel, is launched. |
| May 14 | The last ever Simpsons short aired on The Tracey Ullman Show. This was later aired a full-length Christmas episode on December 17. |
| May 18 | Donna Mills makes her final regular appearance as villainess Abby on Knots Landing. |
| May 19 | Sue Ellen plans to reveal a tell-all movie on J.R. Ewing, and hopes to make him "the laughingstock of Texas", in the season finale of Dallas. |
| August 14 | Cliff and Nina Warner marry one another for the fourth (and seemingly final) time on All My Children, a record that has not been matched in the soap world. |
| September 4 | The Family Channel debuts it's children programming block called Fun Town. |
| September 29 | Susan Sullivan's character, Maggie Gioberti Channing, is killed off on the season premiere of Falcon Crest. |
| September 30 | NBC airs its final edition of the Major League Baseball Game of the Week (before the package moves over to CBS). Bob Costas and Tony Kubek call the action from Toronto's SkyDome, as the Toronto Blue Jays defeat the Baltimore Orioles to clinch the American League Eastern Division title. |
| October 6 | Jane Wyman is already on medical leave from Falcon Crest, when her character, Angela Channing, is in a coma. |
| October 17 | Game 3 of the World Series, was shown only the first 4 minutes as televised by ABC right before an earthquake occurred. |
| November 15 | The Comedy Channel is launched in the United States. |
| December 18 | A seldom-seen 1956 Christmas special episode of I Love Lucy re-airs on CBS. |
| Unknown | Charlie O'Donnell returns to Wheel of Fortune after a 9 year absence. |
Read more about this topic: 1989 In American Television
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“One cannot be a good historian of the outward, visible world without giving some thought to the hidden, private life of ordinary people; and on the other hand one cannot be a good historian of this inner life without taking into account outward events where these are relevant. They are two orders of fact which reflect each other, which are always linked and which sometimes provoke each other.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“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.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)