Date |
Event
|
January 2
|
Oprah Winfrey takes over as host of
WLS-TV's A.M. Chicago, which would serve as a forerunner to her
nationwide, syndicated talk show.
|
January 9
|
Wendy's "Fluffy Bun" advertisement is first broadcast, which gains
Clara Peller and her "
Where's the beef?" catchphrase national fame.
|
Something About Amelia, a story concerning incest, is broadcast by
ABC.
Glenn Close,
Ted Danson, and
Roxana Zal are the main actors.
|
January 22
|
During
CBS's broadcast of
Super Bowl XVIII,
Apple Computer Company heralds the introduction of its
Apple Macintosh personal computer with the famous
advertisement "1984", the only time it is broadcast on national television.
|
January 23
|
Professional wrestler
Hulk Hogan defeats
The Iron Sheik to win his first
World Wrestling Federation championship at
Madison Square Garden; the match is televised by the
MSG Network.
|
January 26
|
Andy Kaufman makes what turns out to be his final television appearance as host of The Top.
|
January 27
|
Michael Jackson's hair catches fire during the filming of a
Pepsi commercial.
|
January 30
|
One of
Field Communications' last stations,
WKBD-TV, is sold to
Cox Enterprises.
|
February 1
|
Arts & Entertainment Network launches from the merger of
ARTS and
RCA's The Entertainment Channel. It originally broadcasts after kids' channel Nickelodeon signs off.
|
Lifetime is launched from the merger of
Hearst/
ABC's Daytime and
Viacom's Cable Health Network.
|
In
Bakersfield, California,
CBS affiliate
KPWR-TV changes its call letters to the current
KGET-TV, in preparation for an affiliation swap with
NBC affiliate
KERO-TV the following month.
|
February 10
|
NBC airs the
made-for-television movie
Little House: The Last Farewell. Serving to tie up loose ends to storylines on the main
Little House on the Prairie series, The Last Farewell concerns
Charles and
Caroline deciding to visit Walnut Grove. They learn that a railroad tycoon actually holds the deed to the township, and he wants to take it over for his own financial gain. Despite their best efforts, the townspeople are unable to drive the businessman away. At a town meeting, John Carter offers a supply of explosives that he has. Each man takes a turn blowing up his own building in an emotional farewell to the town.
[1]
|
February 20
|
17 of the 24 added minutes are utilized by
ABC for the network television premiere of
Superman II. Subsequent ABC airings of the longer version would be cut further for more advertising time. The full 146-minute extended cut was shown internationally, including parts of Canada. As with the
first film,
Alexander and
Ilya Salkind prepared a version for worldwide television release that re-inserted unused footage (in this case 24 minutes) into the film. It was through this extended version that viewers first caught a glimpse into the Superman II that might have happened had
Richard Donner remained as director. In fact, a majority of the added footage was shot by Donner before
Richard Lester became director.
|
February 25
|
Eddie Murphy participates in his final live episode as a cast member on
NBC's
Saturday Night Live. The remainder of his appearances for the
season would only be in the form of previously recorded sketches. Murphy's final overall episode as a cast member would air on April 14.
|
February 26
|
KDRV in
Medford, Oregon signs on as an
ABC affiliate, giving the Medford market full-time access to all three networks for the first time.
|
CBS airs the network broadcast television premiere of
Star Wars.
|
February 28
|
At the
26th Grammy Awards telecast by
CBS,
Michael Jackson wins a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards.
|
March 16
|
Gary Plauché shoots and kills Jeff Doucet, who had
kidnapped,
sexually assaulted, and
molested Plauché's son, Jody. The killing was captured on camera by a local news crew. Doucet was flown back from California to
Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport, also known as Ryan Field, to face trial. Doucet arrived and was led in handcuffs by police officers through the airport at around 9:30 p.m., where Plauché was waiting for Doucet with a gun. Plauché was friends with several high-ranking police officers in the
Baton Rouge Police Department; while many people believed that these contacts told Plauché where and when Doucet would be arriving, it was actually an employee of the local
ABC affiliate
WBRZ-TV who gave Plauché the information. A news crew from WBRZ-TV was also waiting for Doucet and had set up their cameras to record his arrival.
|
March 19
|
Denver's
ABC affiliate KBTV changes its name to
KUSA-TV to reflect its status with
USA Today.
|
March 21
|
New England Sports Network, initially known as NESN is initiated.
|
March 25
|
WNOL-TV, an
independent station goes on the air in
New Orleans.
|
March 28
|
Actress
Jeanne Cooper has her own real life
facelift procedure performed onscreen during an episode of
The Young and the Restless. Cooper's character,
Katherine Chancellor is written as having the exact same procedure performed.
|
April 1
|
Nickelodeon celebrates its 5th anniversary.
|
April 7
|
After being cancelled by
ABC following its third season,
Too Close for Comfort with the aid of
Metromedia, is
revived for the
first-run syndicated market.
|
April
|
John Houlihan wins the Natural Triple Jackpot worth $26,550 on
The Joker's Wild, the largest such win on the show.
|
May 6
|
Minneapolis/St. Paul
religious station
WFBT converts to a general entertainment station after the
Beverly Hills Hotel Corporation bought out the station, changing the calls to KITN-TV.
|
May 8
|
Happy Days airs its series finale,
"Passages". However, five additional
episodes would air from the end of June on through the end of September. The last episode to be aired on
ABC, "Fonzie's Spots", is actually #251 in chronological order.
|
May 18
|
Character
Bobby Ewing finds himself in the crossfire as a rival tries to gun down his brother
J.R. on the
season finale of the
CBS series
Dallas.
|
May 19
|
CBS tapes the
Michael Larson episodes of
Press Your Luck in which Larson wins $110,237 cash and prizes. (The episodes, which are split into two parts, would air on June 8 and 11.)
|
May 20
|
The wedding between
Steve Andropoulos and Betsy Stewart on
As the World Turns attracts 20 million viewers. This makes it the second highest-
rated hour in American daytime soap opera history behind
Luke and Laura's 1981 wedding on
General Hospital.
|
June 8
|
Piedmont Triad station
WJTM-TV changes its name to WNRW-TV to honor the death of William N. Rismiller in a shooting incident at its studios June 5.
|
June 23
|
On a broadcast of
NBC's
Game of the Week between the
Chicago Cubs and
St. Louis Cardinals, Cubs second baseman
Ryne Sandberg hits two crucial, game tying home runs off of Cardinals closer
Bruce Sutter in both the bottom of the ninth and tenth innings. The Cubs would go on to win the game in eleven innings, by the score of 12–11.
Bob Costas and
Tony Kubek were on the call for what would soon become known as "The Sandberg Game".
|
June 27
|
The
U.S. Supreme Court rules in
NCAA v. Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma that the
National Collegiate Athletic Association's television plan violated the
Sherman Antitrust Act. As a result, individual schools and athletic conferences are free to negotiate contracts on their own behalf. Together with the growth of
cable television, this ruling results in the explosion of broadcast options currently available. Beginning in
1984, the
College Football Association sells a television package to
ABC and
CBS. The
Big Ten and
Pacific-10 conferences sell their own separate package to ABC.
|
July 14
|
In what became known as "
Black Saturday",
Vince McMahon's
World Wrestling Federation takes over
Superstation WTBS'
Saturday evening time period once occupied by
Georgia Championship Wrestling.
|
July 17
|
CBS broadcasts
W*A*L*T*E*R, a
television pilot for the third
spin-off of
M*A*S*H. The pilot stars
Gary Burghoff, who reprises his M*A*S*H character
Corporal Walter "Radar" O'Reilly. Since the pilot is never picked up by
CBS as a series, it is shown as a "CBS
Special Presentation". It is shown once in the Eastern and
Central time zones of the United States, but pre-empted on the West Coast by
CBS News coverage of the
Democratic National Convention. This is the only known broadcast of the pilot.
[2]
|
July 23
|
MTV broadcasts the live
World Wrestling Federation event "
The Brawl to End It All" from
Madison Square Garden in
New York City, where
Wendi Richter won the
WWF Women's Championship from
The Fabulous Moolah.
|
July 28
|
ABC
begins their
coverage of the
Summer Olympic Games from
Los Angeles.
Jim McKay and
Peter Jennings served as
hosts for the opening ceremonies. This is to date, the final time that ABC would broadcast the Summer Olympics. All subsequent, American network television coverage of the Summer games would be handled by
NBC.
|
July 30
|
The soap opera
Santa Barbara debuts on
NBC.
|
Dallas/Ft. Worth
independent station KNBN-TV changes its call letters to
KRLD-TV after being bought out by
Metromedia.
|
September 9
|
The
Tyler-
Longview market's lone television station
KLTV finally receives competition when KLMG-TV (now
Fox affiliate
KFXK-TV) signs-on and takes KLTV's secondary
CBS affiliation.
|
September 10
|
The game show
Jeopardy! returns to television as a
syndicated show with new host
Alex Trebek.
|
September 14
|
Dan Aykroyd and
Bette Midler host
the first MTV Video Music Awards at
New York City's
Radio City Music Hall, an event which included
Madonna's performance of the song "
Like a Virgin".
|
September 16
|
The two hour
pilot episode of
Miami Vice airs on
NBC. This episode started developing the trademark Vice style.
[3] Aspects of Miami Vice considered revolutionary lay in its
music,
cinematography, and
imagery, which made large segments of each episode resemble a protracted
music video.
|
September 17
|
The Transformers
debuts in syndication.
|
September 18
|
The series finale of
Three's Company airs on
ABC following a
three-episode story arc that also sets up the spin-off
Three's a Crowd.
|
September 20
|
The Cosby Show
debuts on
NBC. Meanwhile on
ABC, the
pilot episode for
Who's the Boss? is also broadcast.
|
September 24
|
The game show
Super Password premieres on
NBC at 12:00 noon EST. The new version of the
classic game show is one of the few shows to survive at a time period that normally broadcasts news on any of the three major networks, running for 4+1⁄2 years.
|
CBS affiliate WJKA (now
Fox affiliate
WSFX-TV) in
Wilmington, North Carolina signs-on the air, giving Wilmington in-market affiliates of all three commercial networks.
|
September 27
|
Kelsey Grammer makes his
first appearance as
Frasier Crane in the third-season premiere of
Cheers.
|
October 1
|
Montana, the last state in the Union without its own
PBS station, gains one when
Montana PBS launches.
|
Nickelodeon retires their silver pinball logo (although it would continue to be used in sign-offs until
early 1985) and begins using the orange splat as their logo.
|
American Movie Classics is initiated.
|
October 8
|
NBC broadcasts
The Burning Bed, which features
Farrah Fawcett as a woman who kills her abusive husband. The fact-based film is the highest-rated entertainment event of the 1984–1985 season.
|
October 11
|
Geraldine Ferraro becomes the first woman (and the only one until
Sarah Palin in
2008) to participate in a presidential or vice presidential
debate.
|
October 12
|
Tragedy strikes the
CBS drama
Cover Up. During filming for the seventh episode of the series, "Golden Opportunity," on Stage 17 of the
20th Century Fox lot, a scene is shot that calls for Mac Harper (
Jon-Erik Hexum) to load bullets into a
.44 Magnum handgun. Hexum is duly provided with a functional gun and blanks. The scene does not play as the director wanted it to in the
master shot, causing a delay in filming. During the delay, Hexum, restless and impatient, begins playing around to lighten the mood. Unloading all but one (blank) round, Hexum spins the gun, and—simulating
Russian roulette—puts the
revolver to his right temple and pulls the trigger,
[4] apparently unaware of the danger. At a close enough range, the effect of the powder gasses is a small explosion, so although the paper wadding in the blank that Hexum discharged did not penetrate his skull, there was enough
blunt force trauma to shatter a
quarter-sized piece of his skull and propel the pieces into his brain, causing massive
hemorrhaging.
[5]
[6] Hexum is then rushed to Beverly Hills Medical Center, undergoing five hours of surgery to repair his wounds.
[6] Six days later, on October 18, Hexum is declared
brain dead at age 26.
|
October 27
|
Turner Broadcasting System initiates the
Cable Music Channel in the U.S., only to end it one month later.
|
November 10
|
On
PBS
Sesame Street celebrates its 15th anniversary.
|
November 12
|
Theresa Saldana appears as herself in the
NBC movie
Victims for Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story, a retelling of her 1982 stabbing incident and its aftermath.
|
December 8
|
The final episode of
Captain Kangaroo airs. This ends a 29-year run on
CBS that made it the longest-running nationally broadcast children's television program of its day.
|
December 15
|
One year after officially departing the cast of
NBC's
Saturday Night Live,
Eddie Murphy returns to
guest host. This would be Murphy's last appearance on the show (not counting a brief appearance during SNL's
40th Anniversary Special in 2015) until hosting again during
the forty-fifth season in 2019.
|
December 17
|
George C. Scott plays
Ebenezer Scrooge in a new version of the
Dickens classic
A Christmas Carol, broadcast by
CBS.
|
The
ABC soap opera
One Life to Live changes its opening sequence and theme song, which lasted until 1991.
|
ABC purchases a majority stake of
ESPN from
Getty Oil Corp.
|
KLDO-TV in
Laredo, Texas signs-on as an
ABC affiliate, giving Laredo in-market affiliates of all three commercial networks (it is now an
Univision affiliate).
|
December 28
|
On
ABC,
The Edge of Night ends its 28-year run. The soap opera started on
CBS in 1956, moving to ABC in 1975.
|
During an interview backstage at
Madison Square Garden for the
ABC newsmagazine
20/20, reporter
John Stossel tells professional wrestler
David Schultz that he thought pro wrestling was fake. Schultz responds by hitting Stossel in the head twice, knocking him to the floor each time.
[7] The attack attracts a large amount of media coverage and is later aired not only on 20/20, but also on other national television outlets. ABC itself later reports receiving more than 1,000 calls from viewers inquiring about Stossel's health.
|