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In American television in 1992, notable events included television series debuts, finales, cancellations, and channel initiations, closures and rebrandings, as well as information about controversies and disputes.
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| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| January 6 | The weekly overnight news program World News Now debuts on ABC. |
| January 19 | The World Wrestling Federation holds the fifth annual Royal Rumble event on pay-per-view. In the main event, Ric Flair wins the Royal Rumble match and the vacant WWF World Heavyweight Championship. |
| January 26 | During halftime of CBS' telecast of Super Bowl XXVI, Fox counter-programs with a special live-edition of the sketch comedy program In Living Color. |
| In a 60 Minutes interview, Bill and Hillary Clinton deny the allegations made against Bill in an interview that was viewed by millions.[1] | |
| February 8 | The opening ceremonies for the Winter Olympics from Albertville, France is broadcast on CBS. This is the first of three consecutive Olympic Winter Games that CBS will broadcast, concluding with the 1998 Winter Olympics from Nagano, Japan. It's also the first time that CBS would televise the Olympics (either Winter or Summer) since the 1960 Summer Games from Rome, Italy. |
| February 14 | Green Bay Fox station WXGZ goes dark, and former Green Bay independent station WGBA-TV took the Fox affiliation. |
| February 22 | Barbra Streisand makes a surprise cameo appearance during a "Coffee Talk" sketch with Mike Myers, Madonna, and Roseanne Barr on NBC's Saturday Night Live. |
| February 24 | CBS acquires the assets of Midwest Communications, owners of the network's dominant affiliate in the Twin Cities, WCCO-TV. This also results in an affiliation swap in both Marquette, Michigan and Green Bay, Wisconsin: WJMN-TV, the Midwest-owned satellite station of Green Bay's ABC affiliate WFRV-TV, swaps its own ABC affiliation with primary CBS/secondary NBC affiliate WLUC-TV on this date, while WFRV-TV itself swaps with CBS affiliate WBAY-TV on March 15. (The delay in Green Bay occurs since WBAY-TV wanted to swap on or near March 17, the 39th anniversary of its first sign-on.) |
| February 29 | Full Moon Over Miami, a one-off programming block of a three-way, two-hour crossover event airs on NBC. It involves three television sitcoms created by Susan Harris: The Golden Girls, Empty Nest and Nurses. The event depicts a fictional full moon on Leap Day storming into the storylines of the three series set in Miami, Florida. |
| March 28 | CBS broadcasts the East Regional men's basketball final between Duke and Kentucky. With 2.1 seconds remaining in overtime, Christian Laettner hit a jumper as time expired to give Duke the 104–103 win. The game which was called by Verne Lundquist and Len Elmore, has since been considered by many to be the greatest college basketball game ever played.[2][3] |
| April 4 | TBS' Saturday afternoon/early evening World Championship Wrestling program is renamed WCW Saturday Night. The main event is Steve Austin defeating The Z-Man in a 2-out-of-3 falls match for the WCW World Television Title. |
| April 18 | Sean McDonough makes his debut as the new lead play–by–play announcer for Major League Baseball telecasts on CBS. Replacing Jack Buck, who was dismissed by the network following the 1991 World Series, McDonough would serve in that capacity alongside analyst Tim McCarver for the final two years of CBS' contract with Major League Baseball. |
| April 25 | ABC broadcasts the series finales of Who's the Boss?, Growing Pains, and MacGyver. |
| April 29 | Batman (1989 film) makes its broadcast television premiere on CBS. |
| April 30 | The Nickelodeon time capsule was buried at Nickelodeon Studios in Orlando, Florida. |
| May 1 | Sesame Street broadcasts its 3,000th episode. |
| May 19 | Vice President of the United States Dan Quayle speaks at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. During his speech,[4] he criticizes the Murphy Brown character for "mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone".[5][6][7][8] |
| May 22 | After 30 years, 66-year-old Johnny Carson hosts The Tonight Show on NBC for the 4,531st and last time. |
| May 25 | Jay Leno debuts as host of NBC's The Tonight Show. |
| May 26–June 1 | SportsChannel America airs the last of four consecutive Stanley Cup Finals. |
| June 1 | In New York City, NBC's flagship television station WNBC dropped the "-TV" suffix from its call letters (following the sale in 1988 of its sister radio station WNBC-AM by NBC's then-parent company General Electric) in favor of the new branding slogan "4 New York". The accompanying station image campaign was titled "We're 4 New York" and featured a musical theme composed by Edd Kalehoff. The campaign is revived two times, one is during the 2002 Winter Olympics and once again in 2007. |
| June 3 | Presidential candidate Bill Clinton appears on The Arsenio Hall Show and sits in with the house band on saxophone. |
| June 10 | The first ever edition of the MTV Movie Awards is broadcast. |
| June 23 | Another World broadcasts its first and only primetime episode on NBC, named Summer Desire, right before the Daytime Emmy Awards. |
| August 7 | After Growing Pains actress Tracey Gold loses a massive amount of weight due to anorexia nervosa, she is placed in hospital care. As a result, she is written out of most of the ABC sitcom's final episodes. |
| August 15 | Nickelodeon begins a Saturday night programming block called SNICK. |
| August 16 | Ron Simmons defeats Big Van Vader for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship on WCW Main Event to become the first recognized black world champion in professional wrestling history.[9] |
| August 31 | The fifth annual SummerSlam event airs on pay-per-view. Taking place in Wembley Stadium, London, England, two days prior, this was the first major World Wrestling Federation pay-per-view to take place outside of North America. The main event saw The British Bulldog defeating Bret Hart to win the WWF Intercontinental Championship. |
| September 2 | TBS airs World Championship Wrestling's Clash of the Champions XX from the Center Stage Theater in Atlanta. The event was not only the 20th time WCW held a Clash of the Champions show but also marked the 20th anniversary of professional wrestling being shown on TBS as Mid-Atlantic Wrestling in 1972. It also was the final wrestling TV appearance for André the Giant, who died several months later. The main event saw the team of Rick Rude, Jake Roberts, Super Invader, and Big Van Vader defeated the team of Sting, Nikita Koloff, and The Steiner Brothers. |
| September 4 | Scared Silent: Ending and Exposing Child Abuse, a one-hour live special hosted by Oprah Winfrey, is simulcast on CBS and NBC. Two nights later, the special is rebroadcast on ABC.[10] |
| September 5 | Batman: The Animated Series premieres on Fox Kids in a 4:30 p.m. afternoon timeslot. It's soon hailed as a groundbreaking superhero show receiving praise for its writing, art design, voice acting, orchestrated soundtrack, and modernization of its title character's source material.[11][12] The acclaim led to multiple Daytime Emmy Awards,[13] as well as the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Programming.[14] In December, just three months after its debut, Fox also begins airing episodes of the series on prime-time Sunday evenings (followed by the live-action sitcom Shaky Ground); however, the TV ratings fell short (as the show aired opposite the perennial favorite 60 Minutes), and the series was removed from this time slot in March 1993. |
| September 12 | NBC is the first network to cancel all their Saturday morning cartoons in favor of four shows, Saved By The Bell, California Dreams, NBA Inside Stuff, and Name Your Adventure under the TNBC banner. A weekend version of Today, which debuted on August 1, is also added. Animated programming would not return to NBC until 2006. |
| September 14 | Pamela Anderson makes her first appearance as C. J. Parker on Baywatch. |
| September 27 | Marlon Wayans and Alexandra Wentworth join the cast of the Fox sketch comedy show In Living Color. Wayans only joins the cast for 13 episodes, but Wentworth stays full-time for both this and the next season (which would turn out to be the show's fifth and final season). |
| October 1 | Cartoon Network begins its broadcasts with a one-hour special titled Droopy's Guide to the Cartoon Network. The Merrie Melodies short Rhapsody Rabbit was the very first cartoon to be shown on the channel. |
| October 3 | Sinéad O'Connor causes controversy when she rips up a picture of Pope John Paul II on NBC's Saturday Night Live. |
| October 10 | Michael Jackson's concert Live in Bucharest: The Dangerous Tour airs on HBO. |
| October 11 | George Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot participate in the first 1992 presidential debate hosted by Jim Lehrer of PBS.[15] |
| October 12 | James Doohan guest stars as Montgomery Scott in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. |
| October 13 | Hal Bruno of ABC News moderates the 1992 Vice Presidential debate at Georgia Tech.[16] |
| October 15 | Carole Simpson hosts the second of the 1992 presidential debates (becoming the first woman of color to do so). President George H. W. Bush is criticized for checking his watch on camera while being asked a question.[17] |
| October 17 | Kristy McNichol's last episode of Empty Nest, entitled "The Boomerang Affair", is broadcast on NBC. (McNichol would return for the series finale in 1995.) |
| October 17–24 | The World Series is broadcast on CBS for the third consecutive year. The Toronto Blue Jays would ultimately defeat the Atlanta Braves in six games to claim their first ever world championship, as well as the first World Series title for a Canadian based Major League Baseball team. |
| October 31 | The first part of the pilot episode for X-Men, "Night of the Sentinels", airs on Fox Kids as a "sneak preview".[18] The second part would air on November 7. South Korean studio AKOM was hired to animate episodes. X-Men was originally set to premiere over Labor Day weekend in September; however, due to production delays, it was delayed to the end of October. When AKOM turned in the first episode, it contained several animation errors, which they refused to fix. Because of time constraints, the episode was aired in an unfinished form; when Fox re-aired the pilot in early 1993, the errors were corrected.[19] The second episode was submitted just before the deadline, with 50 scenes missing and a single day reserved for editing. |
| November 1 | Texas billionaire Ross Perot acquires blocks of TV time for his presidential campaign. |
| November 14 | Nickelodeon broadcasts the Kids' Choice Awards live[20] for the first time. |
| November 17 | Dateline NBC airs an hour-long investigative report titled "Waiting to Explode," which focused on allegations that General Motors' Rounded-Line Chevrolet C/K-Series pickup trucks exploded upon impact when involved in collisions due to the poor design of the vehicle model's fuel tanks. It is also later revealed that the Dateline report had been dishonest about the fuel tanks rupturing and the alleged 30 miles per hour (48 km/h) speed at which the collision was conducted. The actual speed was found to be higher than stated, around 40 miles per hour (64 km/h), and after x-ray examination of the fuel tanks from the C/K pickups used in the televised collision, it was found that they had not ruptured and were intact.[21][22] GM subsequently filed an anti-defamation/libel lawsuit against NBC after conducting an extensive investigation. |
| November 18 | The Seinfeld episode "The Contest" is broadcast on NBC. Despite its controversy, the episode will win an Emmy Award and be named as the number one episode of all time by TV Guide. |
| November 21 | An episode of Captain Planet and the Planeteers titled "A Formula for Hate" becomes the first episode in an American children's animated series to directly deal with the HIV/AIDS pandemic.[23] |
| December 1 | On CBS, The Young and the Restless broadcasts its 5,000th episode. In celebration of this, a Y&R-themed Showcase is presented on The Price is Right, which also airs on CBS. |
Debuts
Returning this year
| Show | Last aired | Previous network | New title | New network | Returning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Ben Stiller Show | 1990 | MTV | Same | Fox | September 27 |
Ending this year
Entering syndication this year
A list of programs (current or canceled) that have accumulated enough episodes (between 65 and 100) or seasons (3 or more) to be eligible for off-network syndication and/or basic cable runs.
| Show | Seasons | In production | Notes | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Gladiators | 3 | Yes | Cable syndication on USA Network. | |
| Life Goes On | 3 | Yes | Cable syndication on The Family Channel. | |
| Murphy Brown | 4 | Yes | ||
| Quantum Leap | 4 | Yes | Cable syndication on USA Network. | |
| Roseanne | 4 | Yes | ||
| Unsolved Mysteries | 4 | Yes | Cable syndication on Lifetime. | |
| The Young Riders | 3 | No | Cable syndication on The Family Channel. | |
| The Wonder Years | 5 | Yes |
Changes of network affiliation
The following shows aired new episodes on a different network than previous first-run episodes:
Made-for-TV movies and miniseries
| Premiere date | Title | Channel |
|---|---|---|
| March 16 | Doing Time on Maple Drive | Fox |
| March 23 | Broadway Bound | ABC |
| May 3 | Day-O | NBC |
| May 31 | Still Not Quite Human | Disney Channel |
| September 27 | Obsessed | ABC |
| November 15–18 | The Jacksons: An American Dream | |
| November 27 | Saved by the Bell: Hawaiian Style | NBC |
| December 6 | The Man Upstairs | CBS |
| To Grandmother's House We Go | ABC | |
| December 13 | Charles and Diana: Unhappily Ever After | |
| December 26–27 | Lincoln |
Launches
| Network | Type | Launch date | Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CNN Checkout Channel | Satellite television | February 20 | ||
| New England Cable News | Cable television | March 2 | ||
| Flix | Cable television | August 1 | ||
| VISN/ACTS | Cable television | September | ||
| MOR Music TV | Cable television | September 1 | ||
| NY1 | Cable television | September 8 | ||
| Sci-Fi Channel | Cable television | September 24 | The Sci-Fi Channel launches with a broadcast of Star Wars. | |
| Cartoon Network | Cable television | October 1 | The Merrie Melodies short, Rhapsody Rabbit, was the very first cartoon to be broadcast on the network. | |
Conversions and rebrandings
Closures
| Network | Type | End date | Notes | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SportsChannel Los Angeles | Cable and satellite | December 31 |
Sign-ons
Network affiliation changes
| Date | City of License/Market | Station | Channel | Old affiliation | New affiliation | Notes/Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| February 24 | Marquette, Michigan | WJMN-TV | 3 | ABC | CBS | |
| WLUC-TV | 6 | CBS | ABC | |||
| March 15 | Green Bay, Wisconsin | WBAY-TV | 2 | CBS | ABC | |
| WFRV-TV | 5 | ABC | CBS | |||
| April 1 | Bowling Green, Kentucky | WKNT (recalled from WQQB) |
40 | Independent | Fox | [24] |
| Unknown date | Auburn, Indiana | W07CL | 7 | Main Street TV | Network One | |
| Date | Name | Age | Notability |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 7 | Richard Hunt | 40 | Puppeteer (The Muppet Show) |
| January 26 | José Ferrer | 80 | Actor (Newhart recurring role) |
| February 2 | Bert Parks | 77 | Longtime host of the Miss America beauty pageant |
| February 20 | Dick York | 63 | Actor (the 1st Darren Stephens on Bewitched) |
| March 6 | Hugh Gibb | 76 | English drummer and bandleader |
| March 25 | Nancy Walker | 69 | Actress (Ida on Rhoda, Rosie the Bounty lady) |
| April 10 | Sam Kinison | 38 | Comedian and actor (Charlie Hoover) |
| May 12 | Robert Reed | 59 | Actor (Mike Brady on The Brady Bunch) |
| May 17 | Lawrence Welk | 89 | Accordionist and bandleader (The Lawrence Welk Show) |
| June 6 | Larry Riley | 38 | Actor (Knots Landing) |
| June 15 | Chuck Menville | 52 | Animator and writer (The Smurfs) |
| June 22 | Chuck Mitchell | 64 | Actor (General Hospital) |
| July 9 | Eric Sevareid | 79 | News commentator |
| October 16 | Shirley Booth | 94 | Actress (Hazel) |
| October 22 | Cleavon Little | 53 | Actor (Temperatures Rising) |
| November 7 | Jack Kelly | 65 | Actor (Bart Maverick on Maverick) |
| November 10 | Chuck Connors | 71 | Actor (Lucas McCain on The Rifleman) |
| November 22 | Sterling Holloway | 87 | Actor (original voice of Winnie-the-Pooh) |
| December 18 | Mark Goodson | 77 | Producer of game shows (Match Game, Blockbusters, The Price Is Right) |
| December 24 | Peyo | 64 | Also known as "Peyo"; Belgian creator of (The Smurfs) |
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