Concentration, the longest-running game show at the time, airs for the 3,796th and final time on NBC, ending its run after 14 years and seven months. The show was the longest-running daytime game show to date until 1987, when the record was eclipsed by The Price is Right, which began its run in 1972.
April 3
WIIL-TV (now WAWV-TV) signs on the air, giving the Terre Haute market its first full-time ABC affiliate.
ABC concludes its initial run at broadcasting the National Basketball Association, marking the last NBA broadcast on ABC until the network regained the rights prior to the 2002–03 season. CBS would take over the over-the-air rights as the NBA's broadcast television partner the next season. ABC's final NBA broadcast sees the New York Knicks defeat the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 5 of the NBA Finals 102-93, which clinched the Knicks’ NBA Championship.
May 17
Daytime television on ABC is interrupted by news coverage of the hearings pertaining to the Watergate scandal. Following ABC's coverage on this day, CBS televises the next day's hearings, followed the day after that by NBC. The three networks continue cycling coverage in this way until August 7.
July 2
CBS debuts the 1970s version of Match Game, which will become the #1-rated daytime television program for 1973, 1974, and 1975, and the #1 game show for its first four years on the air.
WMBB in Panama City, Florida signs-on the air, returning NBC to the market after WJHG-TV dropped that affiliation to become a full-time ABC affiliate the previous year.
On CBS, Kojak’s trademark lollipop makes its debut in the episode “Dark Sunday”.
December 19
After reading a news item that said the federal government had fallen behind in getting bids to supply toilet tissue, Johnny Carson inadvertently triggers an unprecedented three-week panic when he announces, on NBC's The Tonight Show, that there is an acute shortage of toilet paper in the United States. The panic was settled in January 1974.
Founded by Paul Crouch, the station began after he purchased KLXA-TV to start a religious television network by converting the former independent station into the network's flagship, which eventually became KTBN-TV.
