Events
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| January 3 | The USA Network was founded. |
| January 9 | The Music for UNICEF Concert is performed in New York City. The televised special airs the following night on NBC in the United States. |
| February 11 | In the US, 43 million viewers watch Elvis, a made for TV movie starring Kurt Russell as Elvis Presley, on ABC. |
| March 6 | Another World becomes the first (and, to date, the only) soap opera to air regularly scheduled ninety-minute telecasts. The time extension coincides with the death of long-running character John Randolph (played by Michael M. Ryan) in a house fire. The show goes back to 60-minute episodes in August 1980. |
| Villain Roger Thorpe (played by Michael Zaslow) rapes his wife Holly (Maureen Garrett) on Guiding Light, the first time spousal rape was shown on U.S. television. | |
| March 19 | C-SPAN, an American television channel focusing on government and public affairs, is launched. |
| April 1 | Nickelodeon, an American cable channel focusing on children's programming, is launched. |
| April 22 | Friendly Fire, a TV movie starring Carol Burnett as a mother who wants to know how her son died in Vietnam, airs on ABC. |
| April 23 | The Price is Right on CBS moves to 11:00 A.M. EST and remains in that slot to this day. |
| August 27 | WTCG was renamed into WTBS in Atlanta. |
| September 7 | ESPN begins broadcasting sports 24/7 and was the first cable TV channel to be launched as a 24-hour channel. |
| September 19 | On the two-hour TV-movie season premiere event on Eight is Enough, both David and Susan Bradford married their respective loves in a double ceremony. The premiere grabbed a 40 share across the two hours. |
| November 4 | Jaws was broadcast on television for the first time on ABC. |
| December 1 | The Movie Channel, an American premium cable channel, begins broadcasting movies 24/7. |
| General Hospital tops the yearly daytime television ratings for the first time. |
Read more about this topic: 1979 In American Television
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“The system was breaking down. The one who had wandered alone past so many happenings and events began to feel, backing up along the primal vein that led to his center, the beginning of hiccup that would, if left to gather, explode the center to the extremities of life, the suburbs through which one makes one’s way to where the country is.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“All strange and terrible events are welcome,
But comforts we despise.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“That’s the great danger of sectarian opinions, they always accept the formulas of past events as useful for the measurement of future events and they never are, if you have high standards of accuracy.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)