1993 in American television
The following is a list of events affecting American television during 1993. Events listed include television series debuts, finales, cancellations, and channel initiations, closures and rebrandings, as well as information about controversies and disputes.
| List of years in American television: |
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| 1992–93 United States network television schedule |
| 1993–94 United States network television schedule |
| List of American television programs currently in production |
Events
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| January 3 | ABC and CBS simultaneously broadcast their own movies based on Amy Fisher's life, with Fisher played by Drew Barrymore (for ABC) and Alyssa Milano (for CBS); NBC had broadcast its own version of the Fisher saga six days earlier (December 28, 1992). |
| Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the fourth series in the Star Trek franchise, premieres in syndication. | |
| January 4 | Nick Jr. celebrates its fifth anniversary. |
| January 8 | ABC affiliate KOUS-TV (now Fox affiliate KHMT) in Billings, Montana, which had suffered reception problems for most of its history, signs off the air (it will return to the air as KHMT in August 1995). Later that day, KSVI signs-on the air, taking KOUS-TV's intellectual unit and ABC affiliation with it.[1][2] |
| January 11 | Monday Night Raw airs its first episode, live from the Grand Ballroom at the Manhattan Center in New York City, on the USA Network. In the main event, The Undertaker defeats Damien Demento. |
| January 14 | David Letterman announces[3] during a press conference that he will be moving his late-night program from NBC to CBS come August 1993. |
| January 16 | On Saturday Night Live, Madonna parodies Marilyn Monroe's "Happy Birthday Mr. President, as “Happy Inauguration Mr. President”. On the same episode, she imitates Sinéad O'Connor's actions from earlier in the season. |
| January 19 | Fox expands its regular prime-time schedule to seven days a week; the network celebrates by premiering two dramas on this Tuesday: Class of '96 and Key West. |
| January 20 | Warner Bros. Television Distribution launches the Prime Time Entertainment Network. |
| January 31 | The Super Bowl, broadcast by NBC, has a solo halftime performer for the first time—Michael Jackson, who performed a medley of his most successful songs. |
| February 10 | Oprah Winfrey interviews Michael Jackson during a live primetime special on ABC, hosted at Jackson's Neverland Ranch (Jackson's first TV interview since 1979 with Barbara Walters for 20/20). |
| Fox gets a full-time home in Grand Junction, Colorado when KFQX signs-on the air. | |
| February 24 | Michael Jackson receives a Grammy Legend Award at the 35th Grammy Awards, presented by his younger sister, Janet. The ceremony is broadcast by CBS. |
| February 26 | The Days of Our Lives nighttime special Night Sins is broadcast by NBC. |
| March 2 | Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade makes its network television premiere on CBS. |
| March 4 | ESPN holds the first ever ESPY Awards. The highlight is Jim Valvano's speech while accepting the inaugural Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award. He announced the creation of The V Foundation for Cancer Research, an organization dedicated to finding a cure for cancer.[4] Less than two months after his famous ESPY speech, Valvano died following a nearly yearlong battle with metastatic cancer. |
| March 8 | Beavis and Butt-Head premieres on MTV. |
| March 13 | Harrison Ford appears as Indiana Jones in the bookend scenes for an episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles on ABC. |
| March 22 | Shining Time Station is back with a third season on PBS with George Carlin playing Mr. Conductor once again and this time lasting for 25 episodes where most of them include only one Thomas story. |
| March 26 | CBS broadcasts the last new episode of Family Feud with host Ray Combs. The series would be broadcast as reruns until September 10. |
| March 28 | Through a brokered deal with ESPN, ABC begins the first of a two-year deal with the National Hockey League to televise six regional Sunday afternoon broadcasts (including the first three Sundays of the playoffs). This marked the first time that regular season National Hockey League games were broadcast on American network television[5] since 1974–75 (when NBC was the NHL's American broadcast television partner). |
| March 31 | General Hospital uses Jacques Urbont's musical composition "Autumn Breeze" and the exterior shot of the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center for its opening and ending credits sequence for the final time. This particular sequence had been used since April 14, 1975 and was succeeded the following day by a new opening, "Faces of the Heart" by Dave Koz. |
| April 4 | Rugrats premieres in the UK on the BBC. |
| The ninth annual WrestleMania event is broadcast on pay-per-view. This was the first WrestleMania event to be held outdoors as it took place at Caesars Palace in Paradise, Nevada. This was also the first World Wrestling Federation event to feature Jim Ross as a commentator. The main event saw Hulk Hogan defeating Yokozuna, who had won the belt moments prior, to win the WWF Championship (Hogan actually wrestled earlier in the night, teaming up with Brutus Beefcake in a loss to Money Inc. via DQ and failed to win the WWF Tag Team Championship). | |
| April 18 | The Disney Channel celebrates its 10th anniversary. |
| April 25 | Lorne Michaels chooses Conan O'Brien, who was a writer for The Simpsons at the time and a former writer for Michaels at Saturday Night Live, to fill David Letterman's old seat directly after The Tonight Show on NBC.[6] |
| May 5 | Senior As the World Turns cast member Don Hastings hosts a memorial tribute to Douglas Marland. Marland, who died during March after an abdominal surgery procedure, had been the series' chief writer since 1985 and was responsible for several story lines on the CBS soap opera. |
| May 13 | A cartoon version of Barry White appears on the fourth-season finale of the Fox cartoon-sitcom The Simpsons. |
| Knots Landing airs a two-hour series finale on CBS. | |
| May 14 | Jaimee Foxworth (Judy) and Telma Hopkins (Rachel) make their final regular appearances on the ABC sitcom Family Matters; though Hopkins later makes return guest appearances on the series as Rachel while Foxworth's character Judy disappears without explanation. |
| May 19 | The gang at West Beverly graduate from high school in the Season 3 finale of Beverly Hills, 90210. |
| May 20 | NBC airs the fourth season finale of Seinfeld, expanded to 60 minutes. The episode concludes a season-long story sequence involving a pilot show written by Jerry and George, with the pilot finally coming to fruition only to be refused by NBC executives. Immediately afterwards, 80.4 million people tune to NBC to watch the series finale of Cheers. |
| May 22 | Saved by the Bell broadcasts its series finale on NBC, as the cast graduates. This leads to the debut of a spin-off, Saved by the Bell: The College Years, three months later. |
| May 23 | One month after federal agents make an infamous raid on David Koresh's Waco, Texas, compound, NBC broadcasts a hastily produced television movie based on the incident, In the Line of Duty: Ambush in Waco; Tim Daly plays Koresh for the movie. |
| May 28 | Major League Baseball's owners overwhelmingly approve[7] a six-year joint venture with ABC and NBC. The venture, eventually dubbed "The Baseball Network", displaces CBS as MLB's primary network television package holder. |
| June 1 | Connie Chung begins co-anchoring CBS Evening News with Dan Rather. |
| June 11 | The final episode of Shining Time Station is shown on PBS with "How the Station Got Its Name". The show will return with four family specials and a spin-off Mr. Conductor's Thomas Tales airing between 1995 and 1996 and will continue airing with reruns on PBS until 1997 when it will later air on Fox Family from 1998 to 1999 and Nick Jr. in 2000 in order to promote Thomas and the Magic Railroad. |
| June 13 | The World Wrestling Federation holds the inaugural King of the Ring event on pay-per-view. Hulk Hogan would lose the WWF Championship against Yokozuna in what would be Hogan's final appearance on the WWF's television programming until 2002. |
| June 16 | While appearing as a guest on Yo! MTV Raps, Tupac Shakur confesses to physically assaulting film directors Albert Hughes and Allen Hughes in retaliation for his firing from the film Menace II Society. |
| June 25 | David Letterman broadcasts his last late-night talk show with NBC. |
| June 26 | The final episode of Soul Train with Don Cornelius as host airs. |
| July 2 | Don Drysdale makes what turns out to be his final broadcast for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He provided play-by-play on the first six innings for a game between the Dodgers and Montreal Expos on KTLA 5, before handing it off to Vin Scully. Drysdale later died of a heart attack in his hotel's room, in Montreal, in the early hours of the following night. |
| July 13 | The Major League Baseball All-Star Game airs on CBS for the fourth consecutive year. Played in Baltimore, this is to date, the final time that CBS would broadcast Major League Baseball's All-Star Game. |
| August 3 | Gayle Gardner becomes the first woman to do televised play-by-play of a baseball game when she called the action of a game between the Colorado Rockies and the Cincinnati Reds.[8] |
| August 18 | At Clash of the Champions XXIV, the professional wrestler known as the Shockmaster botches his debut appearance in World Championship Wrestling by tripping and falling face first to the ground after crashing through a wall on Ric Flair's interview segment "A Flair for the Gold". |
| August 28 | Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the first Power Rangers entry, debuted on Fox Kids. |
| August 30 | Late Show with David Letterman premieres on CBS, with actor Bill Murray and musical guest Billy Joel. |
| PBS introduces new branding for their children's programs featuring "The P-Pals", animated characters shaped like PBS logos who encouraged skills such as gathering information, self-esteem, cooperation and achieving goals in specially developed interstitials. | |
| September 3 | Sally Jessy Raphael Show airs for the last time on WABC-TV and KCAL-TV in the New York and Los Angeles areas respectively. The following Tuesday, The Les Brown Show takes over the WABC spot. Sally would move to WNBC and KNBC in said areas. |
| September 10 | The pilot episode of The X-Files airs on Fox. |
| September 12 | Raymond Burr dies of liver cancer at his ranch home in California at the age of 76. (The last Perry Mason movie, Perry Mason: The Case of the Killer Kiss, airs on NBC on November 29, carrying a dedication to Burr with an in memoriam tribute at the end of the movie.) |
| September 13 | Late Night with Conan O'Brien premieres on NBC, as O'Brien replaces David Letterman as host. |
| Animaniacs makes its debut on Fox Kids. | |
| September 16 | Marc Wilmore, Reggie McFadden, Jay Leggett, Carol Rosenthal and Anne-Marie Johnson join the cast of the Fox series In Living Color for its final season. None of the Wayans Family are involved at all during the season. |
| The pilot episode of Frasier airs on NBC. | |
| September 17 | TNT and Cartoon Network both get their international channels launched in the UK for the first time. |
| September 18 | Rocko's Modern Life makes its debut on Nickelodeon, becoming the network's fourth "Nicktoon" in the line-up. |
| September 19 | The 45th Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony is broadcast on ABC. |
| September 24 | Raven-Symoné, Nell Carter and Saundra Quarterman join the cast of the series Hangin' with Mr. Cooper on ABC. |
| The pilot episode for Boy Meets World is broadcast on ABC. | |
| October 1 | ESPN's secondary channel, ESPN2 (known as The Deuce), debuts. |
| October 15 | Jewelry TV debuts as American Collectable Network, a home shopping network. |
| October 23 | CBS's four-year broadcast relationship with Major League Baseball ends with Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Joe Carter's walk-off home run to win the World Series against the Philadelphia Phillies. (Bob Seger's song "The Famous Final Scene" plays during the broadcast's closing credits.) |
| October 25 | The Rocky Horror Picture Show makes its TV debut on Fox; the movie is inter-cut with a live cast performance. |
| October 27 | Paramount Pictures and Chris-Craft Industries announce the formation of the United Paramount Network. |
| October 29 | The first Got Milk? commercial is broadcast on TV. Directed by Michael Bay, a guy obsessed by the history of the duel hears a voice on the radio asking a $10,000 question, "Who shot Alexander Hamilton in that famous duel?", while making and eating a peanut butter sandwich. The question was transferred to the telephone, answers the correct answer "Aaron Burr", but the person on the telephone can't hear it clearly with his mouth full of peanut butter sandwich before time ends, and he only has a few drops of milk left. |
| October 30 | Michael J. Nelson makes his debut as host of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Nelson replaced Joel Hodgson, who departed from the series the week prior. |
| November 2 | Warner Bros. Entertainment announces the formation of The WB Television Network. |
| November 9 | On CNN, Larry King moderates a debate between Ross Perot and Al Gore on the North American Free Trade Agreement that was watched in 11.174 million households – the largest audience ever for a program on an ad-supported cable network until the October 23, 2006 New York Giants-Dallas Cowboys game on ESPN's Monday Night Football.[9] |
| November 14 | The Rugrats episode "Angelica Breaks a Leg" is broadcast on Nickelodeon. |
| November 15 | Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Christina Aguilera join the cast of the Disney Channel series The New Mickey Mouse Club. |
| November 21 | Bill Bixby dies of prostate cancer at the age of 59 (six days after his final directing job on NBC's Blossom). |
| November 22 | TV Food Network makes its debut. |
| November 25 | Home Alone makes its network television premiere on NBC. |
| November 26 | Cartoon Network's first original animated program, The Moxy Show, debuts. |
| December 18 | CBS (which had been a broadcaster of National Football League games for 38 years) loses their rights to telecast National Football Conference games to Fox. Fox wins the rights to NFC games by offering a then-record $1.58 billion to the NFL over four years, significantly more than the $290 million per year CBS was willing to pay. |
| December 22 | Shining Time Station premieres in Namibia with the show airing on NBC (not to be confused with the American television station of the same name). |
Programs
Debuts
Returning this year
| Show | Last aired | Previous network | New title | New network | Returning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scrabble | 1990 | NBC | Same | Same | January 18 |
| Brains & Brawn | 1958 | July 10 | |||
| The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show | 1968 | Super Secret Secret Squirrel | TBS/Cartoon Network | September 5 | |
| Captain Planet and the Planeteers | 1992 | TBS | The New Adventures of Captain Planet | September 12 |
Ending this year
Entering syndication this year
| Show | Seasons | In Production | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st & Ten | 6 | No | [10] |
| Adventures in Wonderland | 1 | Yes | [11] |
| Coach | 5 | Yes | [10] |
| Cops | 5 | Yes | [10] |
| Empty Nest | 5 | Yes | [10] |
| Family Matters | 4 | Yes | [10] |
| Garfield and Friends | 5 | Yes | [12] |
| Rescue 911 | 4 | Yes | [10] |
| The Ren & Stimpy Show | 2 | Yes | |
| Wings | 4 | Yes |
Network changes
Made-for-TV movies and miniseries
| Premiere date | Title | Channel |
|---|---|---|
| February 22 | Babylon 5 | PTEN |
| March 1 | Bloodlines: Murder in the Family | NBC |
| April 4 | Diana: Her True Story | |
| April 18–20 | The Fire Next Time | CBS |
| May 3–4 | Murder in the Heartland | ABC |
| May 9–10 | The Tommyknockers | |
| May 23 | Torch Song | NBC |
| May 24 | Triumph Over Disaster: The Hurricane Andrew Story | |
| May 26 | Without Warning: Terror in the Towers | |
| September 12 | seaQuest DSV | |
| Sherlock Holmes Returns | CBS | |
| September 20 | Danielle Steel's Star | NBC |
| October 17–19 | Danielle Steel's Message from Nam | |
| December | Out There | Comedy Central |
| December 6 | Gypsy: A Musical Fable | CBS |
| December 23 | A Cool Like That Christmas | Fox |
Television stations
Station launches
Station closures
| Date | City of license/Market | Station | Channel | Affiliation | Sign-on date | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| April 5 | Albuquerque, New Mexico | KGSA-TV | 14 | Independent | May 19, 1981 | |
| Unknown date | Wenatchee, Washington | KCWT | 27 (UHF) | TBN | 1984 | |
Births
Deaths
References
- Johnson, John C. "Montana Radio and TV Photos". John in Arizona. Retrieved May 23, 2017.
- Broadcasting & Cable Yearbook 1994 (PDF). 1994. p. C-41. Retrieved May 23, 2017.
- Carter, Bill (January 14, 1993). "Letterman Appears Certain To Move to CBS From NBC". The New York Times. Retrieved August 29, 2021.
- Nelson, John (March 5, 1993). "Valvano receives award, announces foundation plan". Free Lance-Star. (Fredericksburg, Virginia). Associated Press. p. A8.
- Jim Shea (May 7, 1993). "Select few watching NHL on ABC". Hartford Courant. p. E9.
- Hall, Jane (April 27, 1993). "Letterman's NBC Spot Goes to Unknown : Television: The network's late-night choice is Conan O'Brien, a former writer and sketch actor on 'Saturday Night Live.'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 17, 2021.
- Smith, Claire (May 29, 1993). "BASEBALL; Baseball Flips Channel On TV Future". The New York Times.
- American Sportscasters Online Archived 2013-08-19 at the Wayback Machine, "Sportscasting Firsts - 1920-Present, by Lou Schwartz, Retrieved March 3, 2012.
- "Giants-Cowboys draws largest cable audience". ESPN. October 25, 2006. Retrieved 2006-10-26.
- "New(est) For NATPE In A Nutshell" from Broadcasting & Cable
- Buena Vista Television ad (page 44) from Broadcasting & Cable
- The Program Exchange ad (page 50) from Broadcasting & Cable
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