2000 in British Television - Events

Events

• 1 January –
  • 2000 Today, the marathon 28-hour live broadcast to celebrate the dawn of the new millennium ends at 13:30.
  • Launch of Castaway 2000 on BBC One, a reality television show billed as a bold experiment for the new millennium. Thirty-six men, women and children from the British public are placed on Taransay, a remote Scottish island in the Outer Hebrides for a year and must build a sustainable self-sufficient community. The programme ends on New Year's Day 2001.
• 3 January – The highest rated UK programme of the year is recorded, an episode of Coronation Street that gets 18.96 million.
• 7 January – The long-running BBC children's programme Blue Peter reunites two former presenting teams to dig up the time capsules they buried for the year 2000 in 1971 and 1984.
• 1 February – Greg Dyke takes over as Director General of the BBC.
• 15 February – BBC One airs a one-off quiz, A Question of EastEnders to celebrate the soap's 15th anniversary.
• 19 February – EastEnders celebrates its 15th anniversary on BBC One.
• 16 April – The shopping channel Ideal World is launched.
• 1 May – ITV's Day of Promise, a series of special programmes throughout the day hosted by Eammon Holmes, Carol Vorderman and Danielle Nicholls. The day is part of a 12-month campaign in which people around Britain are asked to make a simple pledge to do something positive for the first year of the new millennium. Among the programmes aired today are the first celebrity edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.
• 1 May – Formal broadcasting of pay-per-view (PPV) service ONrequest begins.
• 4 June – 13-year-old Coronation Street character Sarah Platt gives birth to a baby daughter called Bethany, a storyline which intensifies a national public and media frenzy surrounding the topic of teenage pregnancy.
• 8 June – After 11 years Home and Away is shown on ITV for the last time. It returns on Channel Five on 16 July 2001.
• 1 July – C-Day in the United Kingdom. From today, most commercial broadcasters begin broadcasting commercials, promotions, and idents in 16:9 widescreen ratio.
• 14 July – The television reality show Big Brother debuts in the UK.
• 1 August – Launch of the ITN News Channel.
• 14 August – The UK version of The Weakest Link begins on BBC Two.
• 17 August – Big Brother contestant Nick Bateman is evicted after attempting to influence voting on the reality show.
• 2 September = Sky One hosts a special weekend deicated to celebrating the 10th Anniversary of The Simpsons in the UK.
• 11 September – Granada Media plc agrees to acquire 45% of Irish commercial broadcaster TV3 from the channel's original consortium as part of a deal giving TV3 the right to simulcast programming with ITV.
• 15 September – The first series of Big Brother is won by Craig Phillips. He announces that he will be giving his £70,000 prize fund to his friend Joanne Harris, who has Down's syndrome, to pay for her heart and lung transplant.
• 15 September – 1 October – The 2000 Summer Olympics are held in Sydney, Australia.
• 18 September – Launch of The Community Channel, a free-to-air television channel wholly owned by Media Trust and supported by major broadcasters including the BBC.
• September–October – Jacky Rowland, the BBC News Foreign Correspondent in Yugoslavia is expelled from that country in the wake of the presidential election that saw Vojislav Koštunica defeat Slobodan Milošević, for alleged biased reporting. However, it later emerged Rowland did not leave Yugoslavia, but stayed in hiding as events surrounding the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević unfolded before emerging to report on its conclusion.
• 2 October –
  • Q TV a television music channel based on Q Magazine, is launched.
  • ITV soap Emmerdale begins airing five nights a week.
• 13 October – The flagship BBC One news programme the Nine O'Clock News ends after a run of 30 years after the BBC earlier announced that it was to move the bulletin to 10:00 pm. The BBC News at Ten is launched on Monday 16 October. The change attracts criticism from both the National Consumer Council and the Culture Secretary Chris Smith. ITV later announces its intention to reinstate News at Ten from January 2001.
• 16 October – Oxfordshire, once part of the BBC's South East region, becomes part of South Today.
• 23 October – 15-year-old Sonia Jackson, a character in EastEnders, unexpectedly gives birth to a baby girl called Chloe.
• 28 October – Channel 4 airs a season of horror films under the title FilmFear which includes Death Race 2000 and the British television premier of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, banned in the UK until 1999.
• October – Launch of bid-up.tv, later bid.tv.
• 15 November – ITV broadcasts The Remorseful Day, the final episode of the Inspector Morse series.
• 20 November – Judith Keppel becomes the first contestant to win £1million on the UK version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?. On the same evening the final episode of One Foot in the Grave is shown on BBC One in the same timeslot. It is later speculated that Keppel's win was fixed so that ITV would draw ratings away from BBC One. However, the ITC clears Celador and ITV of the allegations.
• 8 December – Coronation Street celebrates its fortieth year by broadcasting a live, hour-long, episode. The Prince of Wales makes a cameo in the episode, appearing in a pre-recorded segment as himself in an ITV News bulletin report, presented by Trevor McDonald.
• 18 December – The British Film Institute publishes its list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century. Compiled by a poll of industry professionals, Fawlty Towers tops the list, followed by Cathy Come Home and Doctor Who.
• 22 December – A contestant in the grand final of Series 29 of the quiz show Fifteen to One, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, is edited out of the edition. The contestant, standing at position 4, is eliminated in the first round, having answered two questions incorrectly. The two questions are cut from the sequence, while the camera jumps from positions 3 to 5. From Round 2 the show continues as normal.