1965 in Television - Events

Events

• February 22 – A new, videotaped production of the 1957 special Cinderella, by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, airs on CBS with young Lesley Ann Warren (in the title role) starring alongside Ginger Rogers, Walter Pidgeon, and Celeste Holm.
• March 24 – Live TV pictures from the US unmanned moon probe Ranger 9 are transmitted prior to its impact.
• April 5 - TEN10 opens in Sydney, Australia, with the highlight of the opening night being the variety special TV Spells Magic.
• April 15 – Paul Bryan (Ben Gazzara) gets bad news from his doctor and sets out to do all the things he never had time for, in the Kraft Suspense Theatre episode entitled "Rapture at Two-Forty." This will serve as the pilot for the series Run for Your Life, which will premiere on September 13 and run until 1968.
• April 21 – The Beach Boys appear on Shindig! performing their most recent hit, "Do You Wanna Dance?"
• April 28 – My Name Is Barbra, Barbra Streisand's first TV special, airs on CBS.
• May 2 - The Rolling Stones make their second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
• June 18 – The original scheduled launch date of the "station that never was", WDV-11 in Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia. The city government had decreed in November 1963 that television could never be introduced in Warrnambool.
• August 1 – Cigarette adverts are banned from UK television, though pipe tobacco and cigar adverts continue until 1992.
• August 6 - BBC withdraws a planned airing of The War Game on BBC1's Wednesday Play anthology series; the network, officially, deems the film's depiction of a fictional nuclear attack on the United Kingdom and its aftermath as "too horrifying" to air on television, though it was widely believed that government pressure led to the banning. The film would win the 1966 Academy Award for Documentary Feature, and BBC would not screen the film on-air until 1985.
• September 10 - The first National Geographic Special, a chronicle of a 1963 U.S. expedition to Mount Everest, airs on CBS.
• September 12 – The Beatles appear on The Ed Sullivan Show, for the fourth & final time, performing songs from their new album Help!. This appearance was videotaped on August 14 before the group launched their U.S. tour the following night at Shea Stadium (Sunday, August 15, 1965).
• September 13 – Today on NBC goes color.
• October 4 – Pope Paul VI's visit to New York receives saturation television coverage on all 3 American networks.
• October 17 – WBMG-TV in Birmingham, Alabama launches on channel 42, sharing dual CBS/NBC affiliation with crosstown WAPI-TV—and allowing viewers in the Birmingham market to watch more programming from those networks that WAPI did not have room for (including The Ed Sullivan Show, The CBS Evening News, and The Tonight Show). The setup lasts until 1970, when WAPI takes sole affiliation with NBC and WIAT does the same with CBS.
• November 5 – Katie Holstrum (Inger Stevens) and Congressman Glen Morley (William Windom) are married in The Farmer's Daughter episode entitled "To Have and To Hold".
• November 15 – The Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC goes color.
• November 25 - CBS airs the first color broadcast of an NFL football game, a Thanksgiving Day matchup between the Baltimore Colts and Detroit Lions.
• November 28 – Julie Andrews' first TV special airs on NBC.
• December 4 – TV Guide launches its Montana edition and now covers all of the contiguous U.S. (A Hawaii edition will be launched in 1968.)
• December 9 – A Charlie Brown Christmas premieres on CBS.
• December 21 - A production of The Nutcracker by the New York City Ballet airs on CBS.

Also in 1965

• First television broadcasts in Paraguay.
• Three independently-affiliated stations in the Philadelphia market—The "Other Big 3 in Philly"—start operations: WIBF (channel 29) opens on May 16; WKBS-TV (channel 48) opens on September 1 (and operates until 1983); and WPHL-TV (channel 17) opens on September 17.
• Motorola introduces the first succussful rectangular tube color TV to the mass market.