1995 in American television
The following is a list of events affecting American television during 1995. Events listed include television show debuts, finales, cancellations, and channel initiations, closures and rebrandings, as well as information about controversies and disputes.
| List of years in American television: |
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| 1994–95 United States network television schedule |
| 1995–96 United States network television schedule |
| List of American television programs currently in production |
Events
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| January 1 | The History Channel is launched. |
| January 2 | The 1994–96 United States broadcast TV realignment continues in two major markets: as a by-product of an affiliation deal between ABC and The E.W. Scripps Company, and a related deal between CBS and Westinghouse Broadcasting, Westinghouse-owned WBZ-TV (channel 4) in Boston, Massachusetts switches from NBC to CBS, while NBC aligns with former CBS affiliate WHDH (which will remain affiliated with the network until New Year's Eve 2016). In Baltimore, CBS switches affiliations to Westinghouse-owned WJZ-TV (channel 13) after 46 years as an ABC affiliate, while ABC joins Scripps-owned WMAR (channel 2) and NBC reunites with WBAL-TV (channel 11) after 13 years as a CBS affiliate. Later that year, Westinghouse acquires CBS, making both WBZ-TV and WJZ-TV CBS owned-and-operated stations. |
| G-Force: Guardians of Space, the second American adaptation of the Japanese anime series Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (the first being Battle of the Planets) becomes the he first-ever anime to air on Cartoon Network. This would be fallowed by Robot Carnival, Vampire Hunter D, Twilight of the Cockroaches (all three on January 29, 1995), and Speed Racer (February 1996). These programs all aired before the debut of Toonami (March 1997), which popularized anime on the network. | |
| January 5 | All My Children celebrates its 25th anniversary and broadcasts a prime-time special on ABC. |
| January 11 | The WB Television Network, a joint venture between Warner Bros. Television and Tribune Broadcasting in conjunction with original network CEO Jamie Kellner, launches. Among the programs offered are four situation comedies (two family-oriented, one family-focused but adult-targeted and one adult-oriented soap opera-inspired satire): The Wayans Bros. (starring former In Living Color DJ/cast member Shawn Wayans and his younger brother, Marlon Wayans), The Parent 'Hood (starring Robert Townsend), Unhappily Ever After and Muscle. While the former three series wound up lasting five seasons, Muscle fails to survive its first season. In addition to being available on around 70 affiliates, The WB is also initially distributed directly to cable and satellite providers via the superstation feed of Chicago charter affiliate WGN-TV (owned by Tribune) to serve markets where the lack of available independent stations or stations that passed over the network in favor of fellow fledgling network UPN prevented The WB from maintaining an exclusive affiliation at launch. (This ended in August 1999, as a result of The WB gaining full-time affiliates in some underserved mid-sized markets and a small-market cable feed being launched to serve smaller markets.) |
| January 16 | The United Paramount Network (UPN) launches, with a two-hour premiere of Star Trek: Voyager. |
| The 1994–96 United States broadcast TV realignment continues in the Flint/Tri-Cities, Michigan market, as NBC affiliate WNEM-TV in Bay City and CBS affiliate WEYI-TV in Saginaw swap affiliations. The move is deemed necessary by CBS to restore coverage in areas underserved by its then-new affiliate WGPR in adjacent Detroit, since WNEM-TV's signal is stronger than that of WEYI-TV. | |
| Hercules: The Legendary Journeys debuts in syndication, starring Kevin Sorbo as "Hercules" and Michael Hurst as "Iolaus". | |
| January 17 | The Golf Channel, a TV channel dedicated to the sport of golf, launches. |
| January 24 | Live broadcasts of the O. J. Simpson trial begin; as a result, many network soap operas are partially pre-empted, more or less, for nine months. |
| February 1 | Classic Sports Network (now known as ESPN Classic) launches. |
| February 2 | Seinfeld broadcasts its 100th episode on NBC. |
| February 20 | What a Cartoon! launches on Cartoon Network as "World Premiere Toons" with the first short being "Meat Fuzzy Lumkins", a pilot for The Powerpuff Girls. The show becomes a massive success and will prove to launch the careers of many prominent animators such as Butch Hartman, Craig McCracken, Genndy Tartakovsky, and Seth MacFarlane. |
| February 25 | In what would be his final television appearance, George Burns is presented with the very first SAG Lifetime Achievement Award by the Screen Actors Guild. |
| March 6 | Deborah Norville begins assuming her duties as host of Inside Edition. |
| On an episode of The Jenny Jones Show entitled "Same-Sex Crushes", Scott Amedure reveals a crush on his heterosexual friend Jonathan Schmitz. Schmitz will kill Amedure several days after the show airs in syndication. | |
| March 13 | The 1994–96 United States broadcast TV realignment continues in Seattle-Tacoma, as Gaylord Broadcasting-owned KSTW joins CBS for the third time while former CBS affiliate KIRO-TV joins the UPN network. |
| April 5 | Fox airs National Hockey League games for the first time. |
| April 12 | Drew Barrymore appears on CBS's Late Show with David Letterman. In honor of Letterman's birthday, guest Barrymore dances on his desk and flashes him "on-air". |
| April 18 | Rox becomes the first television series distributed via internet.[1][2][3] |
| May 7 | Jurassic Park makes its network broadcast television premiere on NBC. |
| May 9 | CBS broadcasts Deadline for Murder: From the Files of Edna Buchanan, starring Elizabeth Montgomery. This turned out to be Montgomery's final live-action acting role (her final acting role in general was in a voice-over role on Batman: The Animated Series) as she would die on May 18. |
| May 12 | As the World Turns broadcasts its milestone 10,000th episode on CBS. |
| May 21 | Above Suspicion starring Christopher Reeve premieres on HBO. In it, Reeve plays a paralyzed cop who plots to murder his wife. Six days after Above Suspicion first airs, Reeve is seriously injured in a fall while riding on horseback, resulting in him becoming a quadriplegic for the remainder of his life. |
| May 24 | ABC announces that an episode of the soap opera All My Children was deleted from broadcasting due to the then-recent Oklahoma City bombing; in the story, villainess Janet Green was supposed to explode the church in which her ex Trevor Dillon was to marry her rival Laurel Banning. |
| June 24 | Fox broadcasts the fourth game of the Stanley Cup Finals between the New Jersey Devils and Detroit Red Wings. This marks the first time that a clinching game from the Stanley Cup Finals is broadcast on American network television since the sixth game of the 1980 Finals on CBS. |
| July 1 | After being purchased by New World Communications from Argyle Television, three additional stations switch to Fox as part of the 1994–96 United States broadcast TV realignment: KDFW (channel 4) in Dallas-Ft. Worth, KTBC (channel 7) in Austin, Texas and KTVI (channel 2) in St. Louis. KDFW and KTBC both defect from CBS, while KTVI leaves ABC. Independent station KTVT (channel 11) in Dallas takes the CBS affiliation in that area through an affiliation deal between the network and Gaylord Broadcasting (owners of KTVT); in Austin, former Fox affiliate KBVO (channel 42) swaps affiliations with KTBC and changes its calls to KEYE; and in St. Louis, KDNL (channel 30) swaps its Fox affiliation with KTVI and joins ABC. Former Fox-owned station KDAF-TV (channel 33) joins The WB, taking that affiliation from KXTX-TV (channel 39) due to a temporary arrangement in which KXTX would carry WB programming, until such time Fox was cleared to move to channel 4. KXTX-TV then becomes an independent station. |
| Outdoor Life Network (now NBCSN) is launched. | |
| July 11 | ABC airs the 66th annual Major League Baseball All-Star Game from Arlington, Texas. It was ABC's first broadcast of baseball's All-Star Game since 1988 and their last to date. |
| July 24 | WFMZ-TV initiates their very first daytime Berks Edition at 5:30 pm and the First Nighttime Newscast at 10:30 pm, covering the entire Berks County and all across the Lehigh Valley of Eastern Pennsylvania and Western New Jersey. |
| July 31 | The Walt Disney Company announces that it would acquire and merge with Capital Cities/ABC Inc. The purchase would include the ABC network itself, stakes in A&E Television Networks, Lifetime and ESPN Inc., and the ownership in the limited partnership-ran animation studio DIC Productions, L.P. The sale would be completed in 1996. |
| August 21 | As a result of the 1994–96 United States broadcast TV realignment, longtime NBC affiliate WLUK-TV in Green Bay becomes the first of four "Big three" affiliates that SF Broadcasting (a joint venture of Savoy Communications and Fox Broadcasting) has purchased from Burnham Broadcasting to switch its affiliation to Fox. NBC eventually aligns with former Fox affiliate WGBA-TV. Two more NBC-affiliated stations (WALA-TV in Mobile, Alabama, and KHON-TV in Honolulu), along with ABC affiliate WVUE in New Orleans switch their affiliations to Fox on January 1, 1996. NBC again swaps affiliations with the former Fox affiliates in Mobile and Honolulu (WPMI and KHNL respectively), while ABC joins WB affiliate WGNO and former Fox affiliate WNOL joins The WB. |
| August 22 | Larry Hagman, former main actor of Dallas and I Dream of Jeannie, undergoes a liver transplant. |
| September 4 | Xena: Warrior Princess debuts in syndication, featuring Lucy Lawless as "Xena" and Renee O'Connor as "Gabrielle". |
| The very first edition of WCW Monday Nitro airs from the Mall of America in Minneapolis, Minnesota on TNT. | |
| September 5 | Alan Kalter becomes the second announcer of the Late Show with David Letterman replacing Bill Wendell. |
| September 6 | In front of a nationwide audience watching on ESPN and on HTS in the Baltimore market, Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. surpasses New York Yankees legend Lou Gehrig on Major League Baseball's list for most consecutive games played. |
| September 8 | The 1994–96 United States broadcast TV realignment continues when longtime ABC affiliate WGHP-TV (channel 8) in High Point, North Carolina is sold directly to Fox (acquired via New World Communications from Citicasters, along with WBRC-TV in Birmingham, Alabama due to ownership conflicts) and as a result, becomes a Fox-owned station. Former Fox affiliates WNRW-TV (channel 45)/WGGT-TV (channel 48, now MyNetworkTV affiliate WMYV-TV) assume the ABC affiliation, and WNRW-TV changes its callsign to WXLV-TV to reflect the new affiliation. Both stations retain a secondary UPN affiliation until WGGT-TV leaves its WXLV-TV simulcast to become a full-time UPN affiliate the next year. |
| September 9 | Kids' WB debuts on The WB, anchored by Animaniacs, which transfers over from Fox's children's programming block, Fox Kids. It debuted on Fox Kids 2 years before. |
| September 10 | A major compensation deal between NBC and CBS after the Westinghouse-Group W/CBS deal as a result of the 1994–96 United States broadcast TV realignment becomes effective: two NBC O&O's (KCNC-TV in Denver and KUTV-TV in Salt Lake City) and the network's Philadelphia affiliate KYW-TV become CBS-affiliated stations (and quickly after that CBS-owned stations after Westinghouse merged with CBS), while former CBS affiliate KSL-TV in Salt Lake City joins NBC and CBS O&O WCAU in Philadelphia becomes an NBC-owned station. Meanwhile, in Miami, CBS-owned WCIX (channel 6) and NBC-owned WTVJ (channel 4) swap channel positions, with WCIX becoming WFOR-TV as a result of the change. Two related swaps also occur in Denver, as former ABC affiliate KUSA-TV joins NBC, and former CBS affiliate KMGH-TV switches to ABC as a result of an affiliation deal between the network and McGraw-Hill, KMGH's owners. |
| The 47th Primetime Emmy Awards are aired on Fox. | |
| CBS acquires ABC affiliate WPRI-TV from Narragansett Television and swaps affiliations with WLNE-TV, thus reversing a swap that took place in 1977. | |
| UPN Kids launches on UPN, featuring two new series, Space Strikers and Teknoman. | |
| September 11 | Sailor Moon premieres in the United States for the first time. |
| September 17 | Part 2 of "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" serves as the season 7 premiere of The Simpsons on Fox. An America's Most Wanted special, "Springfield's Most Wanted", precedes the episode. |
| September 30 | The cast of the X-Men animated series crosses over to the Spider-Man series on Fox. |
| Will Ferrell, Cheri Oteri, and Darrell Hammond join the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live. | |
| October 2 | In Major League Baseball's first "do or die" tie-breaker game since 1980, the Seattle Mariners defeat the California Angels 9–1 to clinch the American League West title and their first ever postseason berth. The game is nationally televised on ESPN with Jon Miller and Joe Morgan on the call. |
| October 3 | More than 150 million people tune in to watch the verdict in the O.J. Simpson murder trial, which ends with Simpson being found not guilty of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. The verdict is met with both praise and criticism. |
| October 18 | In the Michiana region of Indiana, Elkhart-based ABC affiliate WSJV swaps affiliations with South Bend-based Fox affiliate W58BT (which will become WBND-LP by the end of the year). The rush for W58BT to switch to ABC (at the insistence of network executives, who didn't want to wait for W58BT to sign-on a new transmitter) causes a partial transmitter failure, which is fixed within a few days.[4][5] |
| October 21 | ABC and NBC begin their unprecedented shared coverage of the World Series through their soon to be concluding revenue sharing joint-venture with Major League Baseball called The Baseball Network. ABC, who last broadcast a World Series in 1989 airs Games 1, 4, and 5 (with Al Michaels, Jim Palmer and Tim McCarver on the call) while NBC, who last broadcast a World Series in 1988, airs Games 2, 3 and the decisive Game 6 (with Bob Costas, Joe Morgan and Bob Uecker on the call). (A seventh game, if necessary, would have been televised by ABC.) While NBC will continue to hold some MLB rights for the next few years, Game 5 on October 26 would prove to be the last Major League Baseball game to be broadcast by ABC until Game 1 of the 2020 American League Wild Card Series between the Houston Astros and Minnesota Twins. |
| October 28 | In Toledo, Ohio, NBC affiliate WTVG swaps affiliations with ABC affiliate WNWO and becomes an ABC owned-and-operated station. |
| November 2 | Characters from various NBC comedies appear on different shows. The lead character from Caroline in the City appears on Friends, while Friends characters Ross appears on The Single Guy and Chandler appears on Caroline in the City. |
| November 13 | ABC's 30-minute soap opera Loving (1983–1995) is turned into The City. |
| November 20 | On ABC, One Life to Live broadcasts its 7,000th episode and debuts a new opening sequence. |
| ROX and Computer Chronicles are broadcast via the Internet—these are the first Internet broadcasts in the history of television. | |
| December 1 | The 1994–96 United States broadcast TV realignment continues as WHBQ-TV (channel 13) in Memphis, Tennessee ends its ABC affiliation after 45 years. WHBQ-TV is acquired by Fox Television Stations from Communications Corporation of America and joins Fox, while former Fox affiliate WPTY-TV (channel 24) joins ABC. |
| December 11 | On NBC, The Today Show becomes the highest-rated morning news program (and would remain so until 2012). |
| December 29 | CNNfn, a financial news network from CNN, launches. |
| Robert MacNeil anchors The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour on PBS for the last time. |
Programs
Programs debuting in 1995
Programs returning in 1995
| Show | Last aired | Previous network | New title | Returning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Square One TV | 1992 | PBS | Square One TV Math Talk | Unknown |
Programs ending in 1995
Entering syndication in 1995
| Show | Seasons | In Production | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| America's Funniest Home Videos | 6 | Yes | [6] |
| America's Most Wanted | 7 | Yes | [7] |
| Beyond Reality | 2 | No | [8] |
| Blossom | 5 | No | [9] |
| Dinosaurs | 4 | No | [9] |
| The Hitchhiker | 6 | No | [8] |
| Home Improvement | 4 | Yes | [10] |
| Melrose Place | 4 | Yes | |
| Seinfeld | 6 | Yes | [11] |
| Step by Step | 4 | Yes | [12] |
| Tales from the Crypt | 6 | Yes | [13] |
Programs changing networks in 1995
Milestone episodes and anniversaries
| Show | Network | Episode # | Episode title | Episode airdate | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Home Improvement | ABC | 100th episode | "Wilson's Girlfriend" | May 23 |
Made-for-TV movies and miniseries
| Premiere date | Title | Channel |
|---|---|---|
| April 3 | Danielle Steel's Vanished | NBC |
| May 14 | The Langoliers | ABC |
| September 17 | Danielle Steel's Zoya | NBC |
| October 29 | Degree of Guilt |
Television stations
Station launches
Stations changing network affiliation
Births
Deaths
| Date | Name | Age | Notability |
|---|---|---|---|
| February 5 | Doug McClure | 59 | Actor (The Virginian) |
| February 22 | Ed Flanders | 60 | Actor (St. Elsewhere) |
| March 26 | Eazy-E | 31 | Rapper |
| March 28 | Hugh O'Connor | 32 | Actor (Lonnie Jamison on In the Heat of the Night) |
| March 31 | Selena | 23 | Singer |
| April 23 | Howard Cosell | 77 | Sports journalist/commentator (Monday Night Football) |
| April 25 | Art Fleming | 70 | Original host of (Jeopardy!) |
| May 18 | Elizabeth Montgomery | 62 | Actress (Bewitched) |
| May 26 | Friz Freleng | 88 | Animator (Looney Tunes) |
| June 30 | Gale Gordon | 89 | Actor (The Lucy Show) |
| July 4 | Eva Gabor | 76 | Hungarian-born actress (Lisa Douglas on Green Acres) |
| August 3 | Ida Lupino | 77 | Actress & director |
| August 11 | Phil Harris | 91 | Actor (The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show) |
| August 24 | Gary Crosby | 62 | Actor (Adam-12) |
| December 25 | Dean Martin | 78 | Singer, actor and host (The Dean Martin Show) |
References
- Radio Free Cyberspace, Time. June 24, 2001.
- The Real Real World, Wired. Dec. 1995.
- Break out your bong; kill your TV. Usenet. April 18, 1995.
- "ABC out, Fox in at WSJV". The News-Sentinel. April 21, 1995. Retrieved August 21, 2016.
- "Rocky Start for New South Bend ABC Affiliate". Times-Union. October 19, 1995. Retrieved August 21, 2016.
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