Events
- January 20 – John F. Kennedy is the first U.S. president to be sworn in, in a color telecast. NBC covers the inauguration in color.
- February 19 – CFTM-TV, future flagship of Quebec's TVA network, opens in Montreal.
- April 29 – Westward Television, the first ITV franchise for South West England, goes on air.
- May 5 - Alan B. Shepard, the first U.S. astronaut in space aboard the Freedom 7 spacecraft in a 15-min. suborbital flight. The launch is watched by 45 million U.S. viewers.
- May 9 - Newton Minow, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, gives the "vast wasteland speech" to the National Association of Broadcasters, telling them that they could do a better job of serving "the public interest."
- July 1 – The soap opera The Brighter Day airs its first episode after moving taping locations from New York City to Los Angeles. As a result, key character Babby Dennis and her love interest are mysteriously written out of the show; the actors who played them didn't want to move.
- September 1 – Border Television, the ITV franchise for the English-Scottish Border and Isle of Man, goes on air.
- September 30 – Grampian Television, the ITV franchise for North East Scotland, goes on air.
- September – NBC begins its long-running NBC Saturday Night at the Movies participating, with an airing of the 1953 Marilyn Monroe picture How to Marry a Millionaire.
- 1 October – CTV is launched in Canada, the first privately owned network in the country.
- November 4 – RAI's second television channel (now called Rai Due) first airs to 52% of the available households in Italy.
- December 15 - Sam and Friends airs their last episode, it didn't air on TV (according to Muppet Wiki).
- December 31 – RTÉ starts television broadcasts, bringing television to the Republic of Ireland for the first time.
- January 25 – John F. Kennedy holds the first live televised Presidential press conference.
- Danger Man (UK) (1960–1961, 1964–1966) is cancelled due to lack of interest from Australian broadcasters. The series would be revived and revamp
- May 29 – Dave Garroway announces his decision to leave the Today show.
- November 19 – Lucille Ball marries Gary Morton.
- WBNB brings television to the Virgin Islands for the first time. (It would be destroyed by Hurricane Hugo in 1989.)
Read more about this topic: 1961 In Television
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“When the world was half a thousand years younger all events had much sharper outlines than now. The distance between sadness and joy, between good and bad fortune, seemed to be much greater than for us; every experience had that degree of directness and absoluteness which joy and sadness still have in the mind of a child”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“When the course of events shall have removed you to distant scenes of action where laurels not nurtured with the blood of my country may be gathered, I shall urge sincere prayers for your obtaining every honor and preferment which may gladden the heart of a soldier.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)