Events
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| January 1 | Cable News Network launches a sister channel, dubbed CNN2, that features a round-the-clock "news wheel" format. The channel would be rechristened CNN Headline News a year later and is now known today as HLN. |
| The National Association of Broadcasters strikes down its long-standing Television Code in response to a Washington, D.C. circuit court ruling which declared parts of it unconstitutional. | |
| January 2 | American Playhouse on PBS/Channel 13 presents John Cheever's teleplay The Shady Hill Kidnapping, starring George Grizzard, Polly Holliday, Judith Ivey, E. Katherine Kerr, and Celeste Holm as The Celebrity. |
| January 4 | Bryant Gumbel begins his 15 year stint as co-anchor on The Today Show. |
| ABC airs a TV adaptation of The Elephant Man, with Philip Anglim and Kevin Conway reprising the roles they originated in the Broadway version of the story. | |
| January 23 | CBS Reports airs The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception, a documentary alleging a manipulation of intelligence estimates before the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Retired Gen. William Westmoreland, the head of U.S. Military operations at the time of the alleged estimates, would file a libel suit against CBS believing the report portrayed him unfairly. |
| February 1 | Late Night with David Letterman debuts on NBC; Letterman's first guests are Bill Murray (who dances around to "Physical") and "Mr. Wizard" Don Herbert. |
| February 3 | Singer Jermaine Jackson guest-stars as Tootie gets to meet her idol on a very special The Facts of Life. |
| February 7-8 | Superman: The Movie airs on American television for the first time, with ABC airing it over 2 nights. |
| March 4 | The crime drama spoof Police Squad! premieres on ABC; though it only lasts 6 episodes (the last airing on July 8), the comedy would serve as the genesis for the Frank Drebin character and the inspiration for the Naked Gun film series. |
| March 8 | Night of 100 Stars, a benefit for the Actors' Fund taped at Radio City Music Hall, airs on ABC. |
| March 26 | Password Plus is cancelled by NBC after 801 episodes. |
| The soap opera Search for Tomorrow airs for the final time on CBS; NBC immediately picks it up and begin airing it on March 29. | |
| April 2 | John Chancellor anchors the NBC Nightly News for the final time, replaced on April 5 by the team of Roger Mudd and Tom Brokaw, a partnership that lasts 17 months. |
| April 9 | The season finale of Dallas finds J.R. Ewing's longtime enemy Cliff Barnes fighting for his life after a suicide attempt. |
| April 21 | Norman Lear purchases Avco Embassy Pictures and rechristens his TAT Communications Company as Embassy Television. |
| May 2 | The Weather Channel launches in the U.S. |
| May 28 | At about 5:00 pm, Joseph Billie Gwin, wanting to "prevent World War III", forces his way into the studios of Phoenix station KOOL-TV, fires a gunshot, takes 4 people hostage (holding one of them, cameraman Louis Villa, at close gunpoint), and demands national air time. Three hours into the ordeal, Gwin releases 2 hostages, Jack Webb and Bob Cimino. At 9:30 pm, with Gwin sitting next to him with a gun, KOOL anchor Bill Close reads a 20-minute statement; when finished, Close takes Gwin's gun and sets it on the table. |
| July 29 | Professional wrestler Jerry Lawler slaps actor Andy Kaufman in the face on Late Night with David Letterman; Kaufman responds by throwing coffee and shouting profanities at Lawler. The incident was later revealed to be staged. |
| September | After Tom Wopat and John Schneider leave The Dukes of Hazzard in a contract dispute, their characters, Bo and Luke Duke, are written out of the series as joining a NASCAR team and are replaced by cousins Coy and Vance (respectively played by Byron Cherry and Christopher Mayer). Bo and Luke—and Wopat and Schneider—would return to the series by season's end. |
| September 11 | NBC resurrects Texaco Star Theater as a one-time special; however, instead of inviting Milton Berle, the man who hosted the original series in the 1950s, the special presents a salute to musicals. |
| September 13 | Mary Hart joins Entertainment Tonight as reporter and later co-host; the latter role she held until 2011. |
| September 25 | Future Seinfeld co-star Julia Louis-Dreyfus begins a 3-year stint (1982–1985) as featured player/regular castmember on Saturday Night Live. |
| October 1 | KDOC-TV commences broadcasting in Los Angeles. |
| October 2 | Mary Jo Catlett replaces Nedra Volz on Diff'rent Strokes, as the New Housekeeper, Mrs. Pearl Gallagher, from 1982 until the series ending in 1986. |
| October 22 | Susan Stafford departs as Wheel of Fortune co-host to work on humanitarian work. Auditions take place for who will replace her, with Vanna White formally replacing Stafford on December 13; White continues on Wheel to this day. |
| December 29 | Nastassja Kinski makes a puzzling appearance on Late Night with David Letterman, seeming somewhat oblivious to the jokes and everything else that was going on around her and appearing with an unusual hair style Letterman describes as "looking like there was an owl perched on top of her head." (Letterman's second guest, John Candy, comes out with his own hair moussed up in a pile as a spoof of Kinski's hair.) |
| Surround Sound is introduced for home use by Dolby. |
Read more about this topic: 1982 In American Television
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“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.”
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