New Year's Day highlights on BBC1 include the network television premiere of Michael Jackson's 1988 film Moonwalker.[1]
New Year's Day highlights on BBC2 include the network television premieres of Radio Days and Australia.[2]
2 January – The network television premiere of The Accused on BBC1, a graphic and disturbing film starring Jodie Foster, loosely based on the 1983 Cheryl Araujo case.[3]
4 January – BBC2 airs Freddie Mercury: a Tribute, a special programme introduced by Elton John which celebrates the life and work of Freddie Mercury who died on 24 November 1991.[4]
21 January – BBC Select launches on BBC Television as an overnight subscription service, showing specialist programmes for professionals including businessmen, lawyers, teachers and nurses. However, the first series, The Way Ahead, made for the Department of Social Security, is distributed free, on condition that no financial gain is made from it.[9] The subscription service launches shortly after, showing specialist programmes for professionals including businessmen, lawyers, teachers and nurses, although some programmes continue to be shown free-to-air.[10]
22 January – The Dreamstone, the children's animated show, returns for a second series on ITV.
31 January – The Adult Channel launches, a satellite-delivered subscription service featuring cable versions of adult movies and top quality erotic programmes which broadcasts for four hours a day commencing from midnight to 4am.
8 February – Channel 4 launches TV Heaven, a series of 13 themed Saturday evenings celebrating the best of archive British television. The programme is hosted by Frank Muir with each edition focusing, with one exception on a particular year. The first week's episode takes a look at 1967, featuring classic episodes of Coronation Street, At Last the 1948 Show, Armchair Theatre and The Frost Programme.
8–22 February – The BBC provides live and recorded coverage of the 1992 Winter Olympics from France.
19 February – To outcry and scandal, Channel 4 airs an episode of Dispatches entitled "Beyond Belief", claiming to reveal video footage of Satanic ritual abuse. The footage is quickly revealed to be a performance art piece by Psychick TV called "First Transmission".[12]
24 February – After a 24 year absence, the game show Take Your Pick is revived on ITV, presented by Des O'Connor.
27 February – BBC1 airs Cascade, the sixth series finale of Casualty.[13] The episode, featuring a plane crash and originally scheduled to air on 20 December 1991, was postponed because the airdate fell on the eve of the third anniversary of the Lockerbie air disaster.
February – TV-am closes its in-house news service and contracts out news bulletins to Sky News.
4 March – Sky One begins airing the Australian "adult soap" Chances on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 9pm. However, after proving unpopular with viewers, it drops to one episode a week and is shown on Thursdays at 10pm, before ending in early 1993. The series is repeated in a late-night slot in 1995, but on both occasions of its transmission, the final 19 episodes are not shown.
9 March – The Learning Channel, based on the American network of the same name, launches on cable.
26 March
The entertainer and presenter Roy Castle who presents Record Breakers, announces that he is suffering from lung cancer.
The final episode of the long-running children's series You and Me is broadcast on BBC2, although repeats of the show would continue until 1995.
27 March – During the 1992 General Election campaign, Conservative MP Edwina Currie famously pours a glass of orange juice over Labour's Peter Snape shortly after an edition of the Midlands-based debate show Central Weekend has finished airing.[14] Speaking about the incident later, Currie said "I just looked at my orange juice and looked at this man from which this stream of abuse was emanating and thought 'I know how to shut you up.'".[14]
4 April – The final edition of the Saturday morning show Motormouth is broadcast on ITV.[15][16] The programme ends following the announcement that TVS will lose its ITV franchise at the end of 1992.[17]
5 April – The Australian soap E Street makes its UK debut on Sky One with a two-hour pilot, before picking up the series at Episode 43 the following day (the opening episodes having achieved poor ratings in Australia). But due to the violent nature of some of the soap's storylines and its broadcast before the 9pm watershed, some episodes are heavily edited for their UK transmission.
6 April – Ahead of the election, Sue Lawley presents an edition of The Granada 500 in which a studio audience are given the opportunity to question the three main party leaders John Major (Conservative), Neil Kinnock (Labour) and Paddy Ashdown (Liberal Democrats).
9–10 April – Coverage of the results of the 1992 General Election are broadcast on BBC1, ITV and for the first time on Sky News.
10 April – ITV airs the first episode of Heartbeat, the long-running police drama set in North Yorkshire during the 1960s.[18]
14 April – The Independent Television Commission issues an invitation to apply for the licence to run a fifth UK television channel.[19]
The interactive music video channel The Box goes on the air. It is initially carried by four operators, UA, Telewest in London and Bristol, Nynex in the south of England and Videotron which is also based in London and over the next few years, The Box is rolled out on a regional basis across all of the UK's cable system.
4 May – Wire TV launches. Branding itself as 'The Cable Channel', this is the flagship channel of CPP1. Wire TV broadcasts a mix of entertainment, lifestyle and sport from 1pm until 11pm and includes two hours each day of regional programming.[22]
8 May – Liberal Democrat MP and subsequent leader, Charles Kennedy makes his debut appearance as a panellist on the satirical news quiz Have I Got News for You on BBC2.
14 May – Final on-screen appearance of Willy, one of two EastEnders dogs to have appeared in the show since the first episode in 1985 (the other being Roly). Having been killed off in the series, the dog who played Willy dies on 30 May, two weeks after his final scenes are shown.
18 May – It is announced that Sky Sports will supply live coverage of football's new Premier League. It will show two live matches a week, on Sunday afternoon and Monday evening. Sky outbid ITV Sport for the rights. The highlights contract is awarded to the BBC, meaning the return of Match of the Day on a weekly basis.
9–10 June – Episodes 1450–1454 of the Australian soap Neighbours are heavily censored by the BBC because they contain an incest storyline between the characters Glen Donnelly, played by Richard Huggett, and Lucy Robinson (Melissa Bell), who had not realised they were half-siblings when they began a relationship. Scenes involving the story are cut from episode 1450, aired on 9 June, while episodes 1451–1454 are edited together into one episode which is transmitted the following day.[25][26] The scenes are shown uncut in repeats aired by UK Gold in 1998.[27][25][26]
10–26 June – The BBC and ITV show live coverage of the Euro 92 football championship from Sweden.
21 June – ITV airs the first of four editions of Frankie's On..., a series of stand-up shows recorded by the late Frankie Howerd shortly before his death in April. Six episodes had been planned, but only four were recorded before he died. The episodes are Frankie's On Board!, Frankie's On The Coals!, Frankie's On Fire! and Frankie's On Call!.
25 June – The British adaptation of the US informational docudrama series Rescue 911, called 999, begins on BBC1, presented by Michael Buerk; it runs for 11 years.
26 June – The final lunchtime edition of Business Daily is shown on Channel 4. The breakfast editions. which are part of Channel Four Daily, continue for three months.
29 June – Susie Dent makes her debut as lexicographer on the Channel 4 game show Countdown in its 24th series, a role she holds for at least 30 years.
June – Yorkshire and Tyne Tees television merge because of the financial strain brought on by the amount of money each paid to keep their ITV franchises.[28] The merger begins a process that will see the consolidation of ITV over the next decade.
1 July – The former BSB satellite Marcopolo 2 is sold to Norway's Telenor and renamed Thor 1.
3 July
Columbia TriStar and Canwest, two backers of the four-strong Channel 5 Holdings Ltd consortium, withdraw their support for the project, leaving Thames Television and Canadian businessman Moses Znaimer to take the project forward. As Channel 5 Holdings are the only current bidders for the Channel 5 licence there are concerns for the future of the process ahead of the deadline, but Channel 5 Holdings says it intends to put forward its bid as planned.[29]
After more than seven years on the air, Terry Wogan's thrice-weekly chat show Wogan is broadcast for the final time on BBC1.[30][31]
6 July – BBC1 launches the ill-fated soap Eldorado, about a group of expatriates living in Spain.[32] Despite much publicity, the series is axed the following year.
7 July – Date of the initial deadline for applications to run the Channel 5 service. One application to run the channel is submitted by Channel 5 Holdings Ltd.[19]
18–19 July – ITV stages its third and final nationwide Telethon fundraising effort. The 28-hour show attracts criticism from disability campaigners who protest outside London Weekend Television's headquarters, feeling that ITV's charity appeal films for the programme used "pitiful" stereotypes that would not help them to achieve equality.[33]
19 July – Vanessa Binns wins the 1992 series of MasterChef on BBC1.
25 July−9 August – The BBC becomes the exclusive broadcaster of the Summer Olympic Games in the UK when it shows live coverage of the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. Around 15 hours a day of live coverage are broadcast, although Games coverage is interrupted for coverage of other sport, mostly cricket and horse racing, rather than showing non-Olympic sport on BBC2. Eurosport also shows the event and devotes its entire output to the Games.
July – Newsreader Andrew Gardner retires after 31 years in broadcasting.[34]
4 August – ITV airs Katie and Eilish, an edition of the documentary strand First Tuesday about Siamese Twins in Ireland. The film is narrated by Julie Christie, and is a 1993 Peabody Award winner.[35]
6 August – Lord Hope, Lord President of the Court of Session, Scotland's most senior judge, allows the televising of appeals in both criminal and civil cases, the first time that cameras have been allowed into courts in the United Kingdom.[36]
15 August
Match of the Day returns to BBC1 on a weekly basis, following the BBC's purchase of highlights of the newly formed Premier League.
Sky Sports launches Sports Saturday to coincide with the launch of the new Premier League. It follows the same format as the BBC's Grandstand series, featuring a mix of sporting action, concluding with the day's football results. It is presented by Jeff Stelling.
16 August – Sky Sports shows its first live Premier League match. The channel launches an afternoon-long football programme called Super Sunday which allows for two hours of pre-match build-up and one hour of post match analysis.
17 August – Monday Night Football makes its debut on Sky Sports. This is the first time that domestic football has been shown on Monday evenings.
18 August – Emma Bunton, who would later achieve fame as a member of the Spice Girls, makes her television acting debut in an episode of EastEnders, playing a mugger. She would also make an appearance in The Bill the following year.
20 August – Central broadcasts the final episode of the Australian medical soap opera The Young Doctors, making it the first ITV region to complete the series.
21 August – The final edition of London Weekend Television's Friday evening magazine programme Six O'Clock Live is broadcast; the series is ending to make way for changes to London's regional news service for ITV that will begin in January 1993.
Sky Sports broadcasts a live coverage of World Wrestling Federation's SummerSlam '92 is actually held at Wembley Stadium in London, due to the company's growing popularity in the United Kingdom and the possibility of increasing its revenue from the event. It is the first major WWF pay-per-view to take place outside North America.
Sky Movies stops showing non-movies programming. It has previously shown selected premium content such as live boxing, music concerts and World Wrestling Federation matches, due to it having been Sky's only encrypted channel and was known as Sky Movies Plus until today, before the launch of the multichannels package.
4 September – London Weekend Television launches new idents, sometimes called the 'Flying Blocks' idents.
5 September
The first edition of ITV's new Saturday morning show What's Up Doc? is broadcast, debuting both Batman: The Animated Series and Taz-Mania during the first programme. The show also alternates with Gimme 5 as ITV's Saturday morning children's show.
ITV show the 1987 science fiction action movie Predator, as part of a season of films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
6 September – Channel 4 launches its live coverage of Italian football's Serie A. The first match to be shown is Sampdoria v Lazio. The channel continues to show Italian football for the next ten years until 2002.[39]
Casualty returns to BBC1 for a seventh series,[40] moving from its previous Friday evening slot to Saturday evenings for its longest ever run of 24 episodes.
14 September – The US animated series originally created for the Fox Children's Network, Peter Pan and the Pirates makes its debut on BBC1.
17 September
Actress and comedienne Victoria Wood narrates and voices a new animated series for children on BBC1 called Puppydog Tales. The series focuses on four dogs led by the streetwise Rosie in which she tries to teach her naughty friend Ruff some lessons along with jokes, stories and songs that appear at the very end.[41]
19 September – The Times reports that the US media company International Family Entertainment (IFE) has made an offer to buy TVS for £38.2m.[43]
23 September – Channel 4 begins a rerun of the cult 1960s science fiction series The Prisoner, starring Patrick McGoohan as the series marks its 25th anniversary.
25 September – Channel 4 airs the final Channel Four Daily. The news-based breakfast television show which launched in 1989 is axed due to poor ratings. It will be replaced the following Monday with the much more popular The Big Breakfast.
28 September – The Big Breakfast is launched on Channel 4 at 7am, hosted by Chris Evans and Gaby Roslin; it proves to be a huge hit with viewers with an irreverent and lighter look at current events and entertainment news as well featuring celebrity interviews with Paula Yates. It also sees the UK debut of the comedic Irish puppet duo Zig and Zag. The series will run until 2002.
1 October – Sky Movies Gold, a channel dedicated to classic movies, goes on the air. It replaces The Comedy Channel.
3 October
Comedian and presenter Leslie Crowther sustains serious head injuries after his Rolls-Royce veers out of control and crashes on the M5 near Cheltenham. He subsequently undergoes surgery to remove a blood clot on his brain.[44][45]
5 October – Star Trek: The Next Generation makes its UK debut on Sky One. The series is initially scheduled to be shown five nights a week from Monday to Friday at 5pm as well as going all the way up to the penultimate episode of the sixth season on 16 August the following year, but prior to that the first run rights in the UK have been on BBC2 to broadcast every episode from "Encounter at Farpoint", the first episode to "The Best of Both Worlds", a two-part special, with the exception of a banned episode which is not shown until 2007.
10 October – Gladiators, a British adaptation of the American competition show of the same name, makes its debut on ITV, presented by Ulrika Jonsson and John Fashanu.
20 October – Channel 4 airs Burning Books on Sex, a programme reviewing Madonna's book Sex which is published the following day. On the following day, the channel airs Ross Meets Madonna, in which Jonathan Ross talks to the singer.
21 October – The US soap Melrose Place makes its UK debut on Sky One.
24 October – The fictional character Mr Blobby makes his debut in the 'Gotcha' segment of Noel's House Party on BBC1.
BBC1's controversial one-off drama Ghostwatch is broadcast, starring Michael Parkinson and Sarah Greene. The pseudo-documentary drama sees a BBC crew's 'live' investigation into a haunted North London house. The programme receives a record number of complaints and tabloid newspapers run extensive coverage following the suicide of one disturbed viewer.[50][51]
1 November – UK Gold is launched. It is a joint venture between the BBC and Thames and shows programmes from the archives of both broadcasters; the channel later focuses on comedy programmes.
2 November – Channel 4 celebrates ten years on the air; also on this day, the "Fourscore" theme used in the idents is replaced.
3 November – An article in Variety magazine indicates that a number of US companies are interested in acquiring TVS, including TCW Capital, International Family Entertainment Inc. (IFE) and Lorne Michaels.[52] TCW Capital subsequently goes on to make an offer to rival IFE,[53] but pulls out a few weeks later after reviewing the TVS accounts.[54]
9 November – ITV's News at Ten is given its first major relaunch, in part to address the criticism it has attracted over the last few years. In a bid to regain the personal touch that it is felt has been lost, the programme dispenses with the dual-presentation team in favour of a sole newscaster, Trevor McDonald who subsequently becomes one of the most well-known newscasters in the UK. Julia Somerville, John Suchet and Dermot Murnaghan each present News at Ten when he is absent. The bulletin continues with this format until 5 March 1999 when it is axed.
20 November – Bob Mills presents a late-night programme on ITV set in his home called In Bed with Medinner in which he specialises in a cynical view of life and its everyday objects and in pastiches of popular culture icons.
26 November – The Times reports that IFE have increased their offer to purchase TVS to £45.3 million.[58]
29 November – Sky One airs an unseen third season's episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It is not shown on BBC2 until 29 September 2007, due to references to the reunification of Ireland being achieved through terrorism in Northern Ireland between the Provisional Irish Republican Army and the Troubles.
30 November
To mark the 53rd European Council meeting, held in Edinburgh on 11–12 December, BBC1 Scotland begins a week of programming dedicated to Europe, including comedy, sport, documentaries and political programmes. Reporting Scotland also carries a week of reports about Britain's relationship with Europe.
After 37 years on the air, the final edition of the long-running children's series The Sooty Show is broadcast on ITV with the episode Fanatical Fun, one month before its maker Thames goes off the air, although it will be relaunched in September of the following year with the Granada-produced Sooty & Co..
11 December – The Times reports that IFE's bid to buy TVS has been blocked on technical grounds by Julian Tregar, amid concerns that the offer is too low.[62]
17 December – Ahead of the loss of its franchise, the final edition of the Thames-produced current affairs series This Week is broadcast.
18 December – After 30 years on the air, Police 5 is broadcast on ITV for the final time. It has been broadcast on TVS and ends ahead of them losing their broadcasting franchise and after negotiations with the next franchise holder, Meridian, it has been decided that they would not continue with the programme.[63]
As part of a theme night devoted to rival broadcaster Granada, BBC2 airs the first new edition of University Challenge in five years.[70] The show returns for a full series two years later, presented by Jeremy Paxman.[71]
30 December – BBC2 airs Unplugged – Eric Clapton, in which he plays acoustic versions of some of his tracks.[74]
31 December
After losing its broadcasting franchise in the previous year's franchise round, Thames goes off the air after 24 years. TVS, TSW, breakfast television service TV-am and teletext service ORACLE also go off the air after losing their franchises.
Channel 4's testcard ETP-1 is shown for the final time.
December – The ITC rejects the Channel 5 Holdings Ltd bid to run the UK's fifth television channel, amid concerns about its business plan and investor commitment to the project.[19]
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