1994 in American Television - Events

Events

Date Event
January 18 The Peanuts special You're in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown airs on NBC.
January 23 CBS, which had broadcast National Football League games since 1956, airs its final telecast, with the Dallas Cowboys defeating the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship Game, 38–21. CBS had been outbid in December 1993 for rights to the NFC package by a fledgling Fox Network. CBS, however, would regain NFL rights (taking over the AFC package from NBC) in 1998.
January 31 Bill Cosby returned to NBC as a 2-hour movie, The Cosby Mysteries, after ended production of The Cosby Show, for 21 months.
February 1 American pay television channel Encore launches seven new themed multiplex channels (Westerns, True Stories, Love Stories, WAM!: America's Kidz Network, Action and Mystery), primarily on TCI cable systems, becoming the first premium service to offer themed premium services. Starz, which carries more recent film fare than its parent channel, is also launched on this date as part of the Encore multiplex and would later become an up-and-coming rival to HBO, Showtime, Cinemax and The Movie Channel.
February 4 The Days of our Lives nighttime special Winter Heat airs on NBC.
February 19 In an opening monologue on Saturday Night Live, guest host Martin Lawrence makes sexually explicit jokes about female genitalia and feminine hygiene, which results in NBC banning him from appearing on the network (for the next year) and SNL (for life). In repeats of the episode, the offending section of the monologue is replaced by a title card read by an off-screen player, saying that although SNL takes a neutral stand on the issues raised by Lawrence, network policy prevents his remarks from being re-broadcast, and that the incident almost cost the entire cast of SNL their jobs.
March 11 Viacom takes control of Paramount Pictures, which includes Paramount Television. Later in the year Paramount/Viacom announces plans to launch a new over-the-air television network, in conjunction with United Television. The new network, the United Paramount Network (or UPN for short), launches in January 1995.
March 31 Madonna appears on the Late Show with David Letterman and makes headlines for going on a profanity-laden tirade—one of the most censored events in American TV talk-show history, though it results in some of the highest ratings of Letterman's late-night career. (Robin Williams would later describe the segment as a "battle of wits with an unarmed woman.")
April 14 Turner Network Television debuted as a 24-hour classic movie channel, Turner Classic Movies.
April 24 Barney the Dinosaur makes his commercial network television debut in the NBC prime-time special Bedtime with Barney: Imagination Island. However the song "I Love You" wasn't sung in the special due to a lawsuit over the song at the time; this explains why "I Love You" wasn't used in Barney's Favorites Vol. 2, as it uses songs from the special.
April 28 The Simpsons airs its 100th episode.
May 23 Star Trek: The Next Generation concludes its seven-year run with the series finale, All Good Things... The two-hour finale was aired at 6 p.m. on most affiliates, rather than as part of the prime time lineup.
June 1 The US cable channel, FX is launched.
First formal broadcast of Newsworld International.
June 10 The Pay television content descriptors, which describe the varying degrees of suggestive or explicit content in series and movies airing on pay cable channels, are first implemented on HBO and Cinemax. Showtime and The Movie Channel will add the system a month later.
June 11 World Wrestling Federation superstar Hulk Hogan signs a deal with World Championship Wrestling on a live broadcast of WCW Saturday Night.
June 17 With all major networks providing live coverage, former NFL star O.J. Simpson, suspected in the murder of his former wife and her acquaintance, flees from police with his friend Al Cowlings in his white Ford Bronco; the low-speed chase ends with Simpson's surrender to police at his Brentwood mansion.
DirecTV, a direct broadcast satellite service, launches in Jackson, Mississippi.
July 4 The all-talk and information channel, America's Talking is debuted.
July 12 The 1994 Major League Baseball All-Star Game from Pittsburgh is broadcast on NBC. The game is the first production of The Baseball Network, a joint venture between MLB, NBC, and ABC. Hampered by its highly-criticized regional approach to game broadcasts and a players' strike that cancels the 1994 postseason, the venture will be branded a failure even before it dissolves at the end of the 1995 season.
August 7 The Simpsons returned to its Sunday night lineup from the 1989-90 season.
August 12 The soap opera All My Children airs a memorial episode for original cast member Frances Heflin, who died in June. The memorial is in the form of a funeral service for Heflin's character, Mona Kane Tyler.
Fox airs its first National Football League broadcast, a pre-season game in San Francisco between the 49ers and Denver Broncos.
August 21 HBO airs a concert appearance by Barbra Streisand, the entertainer's first public concert in 27 years.
September 1 Independent Film Channel debuts.
September 11 The 46th Primetime Emmy Awards are handed out by ABC.
September 12 The first television stations involved in the U.S. television network affiliate switches of 1994, change their network affiliation. WDAF-TV in Kansas City ends its 45-year affiliation with NBC and WJW-TV in Cleveland, WJBK in Detroit and WAGA-TV in Atlanta end their longtime affiliations with CBS with all four stations becoming Fox affiliates. WDAF and WJW trade their former affiliations respectively with Fox affiliates KSHB-TV (which became an NBC affiliate) and WOIO (which became a CBS affiliate), while WJBK and WAGA move their respective CBS affiliations to former independent stations WWJ-TV (then WGPR) and WGCL; the Fox affiliates that WJBK and WAGA replace, WKBD and WATL become independents only to become affiliated with UPN and The WB respectively four months later.
Original Family Feud host Richard Dawson returns to the show after nine years, replacing his successor, Ray Combs; the show also expands from half-hour to full-hour episodes.
October 31 The FX spin-off channel fxM: Movies from Fox is launched, airing movies from the Fox library on a round-the-clock basis.
December 1 The Game Show Network, a network devoted to broadcasting classic game shows, is launched in the United States.
Home & Garden Television is launched in the United States.
December 8 CBS affiliate KSAZ-TV (channel 10) in Phoenix drops its CBS affiliation after 40 years to affiliate with Fox, after being purchased by Fox Television Stations Group. The CBS affiliation moves to independent station KPHO (channel 5), while the ABC affiliation moves to former Fox station KNXV (channel 15), leaving the former ABC affiliate KTVK (channel 3) forced to become an independent. WITI in Milwaukee also drops its CBS affiliation after 37 years to become a Fox station, moving the former CBS affiliation to former independent station WDJT (channel 58).

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