Events
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| January 15 | Super Bowl XII airs on CBS, the first time the NFL's championship event is played and telecast at night. |
| January 23 | Roots – One Year Later, a special examining the impact and influence of the miniseries, airs on ABC. |
| January 28 | The Doobie Brothers make a guest appearance on ABC's What's Happening!! |
| February 5 | ABC celebrates its silver anniversary with a retrospective special. |
| February 22 | The Police appear in a television commercial for Wrigley's chewing gum. |
| Spring | Fred Silverman, who successfully programmed both CBS and ABC, moves to NBC to attempt to reverse their ratings decline. |
| March 22 | The Beatles spoof The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash airs on NBC. |
| March 26-April 1 | CBS commemorates its golden anniversary in radio and TV broadcasting with CBS: On the Air, a 9½-hour retrospective special airing over 7 nights. |
| April | US television game show program Match Game is rated in the Top 3 of all game shows for the sixth year in a row. |
| April 16-19 | Holocaust, starring James Woods and Meryl Streep first aired on NBC. |
| April 22 | The Blues Brothers make their first appearance on Saturday Night Live; the duo of Jake & Elwood Blues (John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd) are introduced in a skit by Paul Shaffer (as Don Kirshner) and performs "Hey Bartender". |
| April 26 | Ringo Starr's, Ringo, a musical version of The Prince and the Pauper, airs on NBC, with Starr's fellow former Beatle, George Harrison, providing the narration. |
| July 10 | The ABC Evening News is revamped and becomes ABC World News Tonight, employing a unique three-anchor setup (Frank Reynolds serving as lead anchor from Washington, Max Robinson presenting national news from Chicago, and Peter Jennings with international news from London). |
| August 1 | Taking advantage of an oral escape-clause in his contract with ABC, Harry Reasoner returns to CBS, eventually rejoining 60 Minutes. |
| September | The soap opera As the World Turns is #1 in the daytime Nielsen ratings for the 20th and final consecutive year; no other serial has been at the top of the ratings for such an unbeaten yearly streak. |
| September 17 | The ceremony formalizing the success of the peace talks between Israel's Menachem Begin and Egypt's Anwar Sadat—the Camp David accords—is televised live from the White House East Room. |
| September 19 | The chairs on which Archie and Edith Bunker sat through 8 seasons of All in the Family are presented to the Smithsonian Institution. |
| September 27 | Replacing Zara Cully and Damon Evans, Jay Hammer joins the cast of The Jeffersons, for a short period of time. |
| November 17 | The Star Wars Holiday Special airs on CBS. The special gives fans their first glimpse of Boba Fett, a character from the upcoming Star Wars sequel. |
Read more about this topic: 1978 In American Television
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“This is certainly not the place for a discourse about what festivals are for. Discussions on this theme were plentiful during that phase of preparation and on the whole were fruitless. My experience is that discussion is fruitless. What sets forth and demonstrates is the sight of events in action, is living through these events and understanding them.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“The great events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The prime lesson the social sciences can learn from the natural sciences is just this: that it is necessary to press on to find the positive conditions under which desired events take place, and that these can be just as scientifically investigated as can instances of negative correlation. This problem is beyond relativity.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)