Events
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| January 1 | After episode 410 of Soul Train aired on that day, the show went on hiatus for Don Cornelius' brain surgery. |
| January 3 | Plinko is added as a Pricing Game on The Price Is Right; it would become one of the most popular of all the show's games. Also on this date, 3 new game shows debut on rival NBC: $ale of the Century, Just Men! and Hit Man. The two latter shows would be off the air after 13 weeks. |
| February 23 | PBS airs The Operation, a live telecast of an actual open-heart surgery. |
| February 28 | Over 125 million Americans tune in to watch the 251st and final episode of M*A*S*H on CBS, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen". |
| March 6 | Country Music Television (CMT) launches in the United States. |
| March 7 | The Nashville Network (TNN) (later known as The National Network; now known as Spike TV) begins broadcasting. |
| March 10 | MTV airs the video to Michael Jackson's song "Billie Jean" for the first time. The video is the first by a black artist to gain heavy airplay on MTV, and is credited with putting the fledgling cable channel on the map and helping the Thriller album the song appears on become the top-selling album of all time. |
| March 19 | US First Lady Nancy Reagan makes a special appearance on an episode of Diff'rent Strokes, launching her Just Say No anti-drug campaign. |
| March 20 | NBC airs the TV movie Special Bulletin, a fictional—yet realistic—depiction of a TV network's coverage of a nuclear terrorism threat in Charleston, South Carolina. The film is an early collaboration between Edward Zwick (who directed) and Marshall Herskovitz (who wrote the teleplay); both men would go on to create and produce thirtysomething later in the 1980s. |
| April 4 | Archie Bunker's Place airs its last original episode; CBS would cancel the series after 4 seasons (and without a proper series finale), ending Carroll O'Connor's run as Archie Bunker, which began in 1971 with All in the Family. |
| April 12 | David Canary makes his first appearance on All My Children. |
| April 18 | The Disney Channel is launched on American cable TV. |
| April 30 | After Don Cornelius' brain surgery, Soul Train returns first-run on the air with the 411th episode. |
| May 6 | A fire at Southfork threatens the lives of the Ewings on the season finale of Dallas. |
| May 16 | Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever airs on NBC. Michael Jackson steals the show by singing and dancing to his hit single "Billie Jean" and performing for the first time his "moonwalk" dance. |
| June 16 | Pope John Paul II arrives in his native Poland, with ABC and NBC airing his arrival live (CBS, hampered by budget cuts in its news division, airs The Price Is Right instead). |
| August 4 | The cast of NBC's Search for Tomorrow is forced to do a live show for the first time since the program moved to videotape in 1967; both the regular transmission tape and a backup were lost, something that is disputed by outside sources after the fact. |
| August 30 | WKBS-TV in Philadelphia is closed after Field Enterprises failed to find a buyer—even though the station is still profitable. |
| September 5 | PBS' The MacNeil/Lehrer Report becomes The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, the first American network news show to expand from a half-hour to one hour in length. |
| Tom Brokaw becomes the sole head anchor of the NBC Nightly News, ending a 17 month stint co-anchoring the broadcast with Roger Mudd. | |
| Peter Jennings becomes sole anchor of ABC's World News Tonight, following the death of Frank Reynolds 2 months earlier. | |
| Pam Long becomes co-head writer on Guiding Light. | |
| September 8 | The comedy We Got it Made debuts, the first new show on NBC's fall slate to premiere—and the start of one of the least successful fall slates in history, as none of the shows would survive a 2nd season (the other shows being Manimal, Jennifer Slept Here, Mr. Smith, Bay City Blues, The Yellow Rose, Boone, For Love and Honor, and The Rousters). |
| September 12 | The animated G.I. Joe mini-series based on the toy line of the same name debuts in syndication. It still spawn another mini-series the following year, with the ongoing show premiering in 1985. |
| September 27-29 | NBC airs Live... and in Person, a live variety special airing over 3 nights. Sandy Gallin is host, and performers include Neil Diamond, Linda Ronstadt, and the cast of A Chorus Line. |
| October 3 | During a live NBC news update, anchor Jessica Savitch appears incoherent, slurring her speech, deviating from her copy and ad-libbing her report. Savitch, dogged by rumors of drug abuse and instability, still has her contract renewed, but drowns in a car accident three weeks later. |
| October 6 | American rock band R.E.M. makes its television debut on Late Night with David Letterman. |
| October 10 | Adam, a TV-movie about the mysterious disappearance of Adam Walsh, makes its world premiere on NBC. The broadcast ends with a series of missing children's photographs and descriptions, along with a phone number viewers could call to provide any information on their disappearances. |
| November 20 | An estimated 100 million people watch the controversial made-for-television movie The Day After, depicting the start of a nuclear war. |
| November 24 | This day's episode of Sesame Street confronts the sensitive issue of death when Big Bird learns to grasp the concept as it relates to his late friend, Mr. Hooper (Will Lee, the actor who played Mr. Hooper, died of a heart attack in 1982). |
| December 2 | Michael Jackson's world famous music video for "Thriller" is broadcast for the first time. It will become the most often repeated and famous music video of all time and increase his own popularity and the record sales of the album "Thriller". |
| December 21 | Gerald Ford, Betty Ford, and Henry Kissinger make cameo appearances on Dynasty. |
Read more about this topic: 1983 In American Television
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