4 January – Pat Phoenix leaves Coronation Street for the second and final time as Elsie Tanner as she goes to live with old flame Bill Gregory in Portugal, having been in the show since its inception in 1960 (except for a three-year period between 1973 and 1976). She died peacefully in her sleep at the age of 62 in September 1986.
Fraggle Rock makes its UK debut on ITV, nearly a year after airing in the US and Canada. The series is a co-production by TVS, CBC, HBO and Henson Associates.
Daytime Ceefax transmissions are renamed Pages from Ceefax following the decision by Radio Times to begin listing daytime Ceefax broadcasts.[1]
9 January
British-made children's animated series Towser makes its debut on ABC in Australia, several months before debuting in the UK.
16 January – Satellite Television Limited is renamed Sky Channel.
30 January – The BBC's Panorama documentary series airs "Maggie's Militant Tendency" which claims links between several Conservative MPs and far-right organisations both in Britain and Europe. Two of the MPs named, Neil Hamilton and Gerald Howarth, subsequently sue the BBC for slander. In 1986, after the BBC withdraws from the case, Hamilton is awarded £20,000 in damages.[2]
The first of six episodes of Tom Keating On Impressionism, a follow-up to the award-winning Tom Keating On Painters,[3] is broadcast two days after Keating's death, from a heart attack, at age 66.[4]
An estimated 24 million viewers watch Torvill and Dean win gold at the 1984 Winter Olympics skating to Ravel's Boléro.
26 February – Debut of the long-running satirical puppet comedy series Spitting Image on ITV.
10 March – The American teenage science-fiction series Whiz Kids makes its UK debut on ITV, airing as a Saturday feature in most ITV regions. Exceptions are Ulster which airs the series on Sundays and TVS which airs it at a later date.
Colin Baker makes his first full appearance as the Sixth Doctor in the Doctor Who serial The Twin Dilemma.
Horse racing is shown on Channel 4 for the first time.
24 March – Game show The Price Is Right makes its UK debut on ITV. It is produced by Central in association with Mark Goodson Productions and Talbot Television and is presented by Leslie Crowther.[5]
26 March – Return of the popular 1950s panel game show What's My Line? after 20 years, with original host Eamonn Andrews in the chair, now on ITV.
31 March – Pop group Matt Bianco imfamously appear on BBC1's Saturday Superstore when a phone-in caller verbally abuses them by calling them "A Bunch of Wankers" live on air.
The Saturday Picture Show replaces Get Set as the BBC's Summer Saturday morning magazine show. Its running time is extended, beginning earlier at 8:45am.
27 April - The Wind in the Willows makes its debut as a full series on ITV, by this time Ian Carmichael is now cast as a narrator with Peter Sallis takes over the voice of Rat.
4 May – A football match from England’s second tier is televised live for the first time as BBC’s Match Of The Day Live features the promotion battle between Manchester City and Chelsea.[6][7]
6 May – Debut of the long-running light entertainment series Surprise Surprise on ITV, presented by Cilla Black.
10 May – The five-part BBC Schools French language adventure series La Marée et ses Secrets (The Tide and its Secrets) is first broadcast which is repeated each year until 1993.[8] The series continues on 14 June.
The hit animated series Danger Mouse is broadcast on children's cable network Nickelodeon in the US, becoming the first British cartoon to air on that channel and one of the earliest to be in syndication there.
The short-lived American fantasy series Manimal makes its UK debut on BBC1, starring Simon MacCorkindale.
7 June – The first edition of Crimewatch UK is broadcast on BBC1.[9] The first case to be featured on the show is the murder of Colette Aram which had occurred the previous year. A man is finally charged with the murder in 2009[10] and is sentenced to life imprisonment in January 2010 after pleading guilty.[11]
12-27 June - Live coverage of the 1984 European Championship is only shown on the BBC, with ITV coverage restricted to highlights on World Of Sport and same night highlights of a semi-final (which was scheduled as a last minute programme change). Only two matches were shown live - a group game and the final.
19 June – The final episode of Ben Elton's anarchic comedy series The Young Ones is broadcast on BBC2 in spectacular fashion by blowing up the entire cast after briefly surviving a bus crash.
23 June – ITV airs the rock concert New Brighton Rock recorded at the event staged in the seaside resort of New Brighton, Merseyside over two days on 21 and 22 May.
27 July – The final edition of Sixty Minutes is broadcast on BBC1, ending less than a year after it first went on the air.
28–29 July – BBC2 hosts Jazz on a Summer's Day, a weekend of programmes devoted to jazz music.[12]
28 July–12 August – The BBC airs the 1984 Summer Olympic Games. Due to the Games taking place in Los Angeles, BBC1 stays on the air into the night to provide live coverage of the major events.
30 July
BBC1's teatime news programme reverts to its original name of Evening News and to its original broadcast time of 5:40pm. The regional news programmes follow broadcasting for 20 minutes from 5:55pm. This is a stop-gap measure and continues for five weeks until the launch of BBC1's new teatime newshour.
4–13 August – During the second week of the 1984 Summer Olympic Games, the BBC extends its live coverage until around 4am. Rather than closing down, they fill the gap with Ceefax Olympics AM which provides news from the Games to fill the gap between the end of live coverage and the start of Olympic Breakfast Time.[13] This is the first time that Ceefax pages are broadcast overnight.
Technicians at Thames walk out on strike over the use of new cameras and editing equipment along with overtime payments for transmission staff. The strike lasts for two weeks but the station is off the air for just one day over the August Bank Holiday weekend.[15] Management and administration staff take over their roles, broadcasting a skeleton service.[16]
31 August – ITV begins airing the popular French/American children's cartoon series Inspector Gadget.
2 September – The two-part American miniseries Lace makes its debut on ITV, starring Phoebe Cates.
3 September
BBC1's teatime news hour is relaunched and now runs from 6pm until 7pm. A new 30-minute long news programme the Six O'Clock News is launched and this is followed by a longer regional news magazine which is expanded to 25 minutes.
23 September – Barry Hines's acclamied Threads airs on BBC2. Produced by the BBC and Nine Network Australia, the one-off TV drama depicting the impact of a nuclear war in Britain would go on to win four BAFTA awards, including Best Single Drama.[17]
The BBC Radio 4 show Checkpoint begins a 4 episode TV mini series hosted by Roger Cook
5 October
The first programme in the trilogy to be produced by Maddocks Cartoon Productions, The Family-Ness, makes its debut on BBC1.
BBC2 broadcasts an Open University programme at teatime for the final time.
6 October – TV Times Magazine is rebranded back to its original TV Times name.
7 October–December – Pirate television station Thameside TV broadcasts illicitly from south London.[18]
8 October
BBC2 launches a full afternoon service, consisting primarily of repeats of Dallas and old feature films.[19]
The Australian soap Prisoner: Cell Block H makes its UK debut when Yorkshire Television becomes the first ITV region to begin airing the programme in a late night slot. It is followed by all other ITV regions over the following five years.
Scottish Television relaunches its regional news programme Scotland Today as a features-led magazine format with the news relegated to brief summaries before and after the programme.[20]
Pirate television station Channel 36 'Late Night London Television', run by Waveview Holdings, begins broadcasting illicitly.[18]
9 October – The children's series based on the books by the Rev. Wilbert Awdry and narrated by Ringo Starr, Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends makes its debut on ITV, becoming one of the most successful children's TV programmes of all time since Postman Pat first went to air on the BBC three years earlier. The show will move to one future station, Cartoon Network, in the mid-1990s, before returning to terrestrial television in 2003 and moving to its new permanent future station Channel 5 three years later.
15 October – Channel 4's output increases by 25%. The weekday schedules now begin at 2:30pm instead of 5pm while weekend airtime starts at 1pm rather than 2pm.[21]
16 October – The Bill airs for the first time on ITV. It debuted last year as a pilot show, Woodentop.[22] When the last episode is shown in 2010, it will be the longest-running police procedural in British television history.
17 October – Another strike begins at Thames over the same issue which unions went on strike six weeks earlier.
19 October
A management-operated schedule is introduced on Thames. It broadcasts programming between around 1:30pm and around midnight as well as the ITV breakfast service TV-am. For the intervening four hours, instead of schools programmes, Thames viewers are left with a blue screen showing their upcoming emergency schedule and, with no access to ITN News, Thames viewers have to make do with short news bulletins. Weekend ITV schedules for the London region are not affected by the strike, with London Weekend Television coming on air on Fridays at 5:15pm as usual.[23]
Yorkshire Television airs a special documentary on the birth of Prince Harry.
23 October – BBC News presenter Michael Buerk gives a powerful commentary of the famine in Ethiopia which has already claimed thousands of lives and reportedly has the potential to kill as many as seven million people. The news report subsequently leads to the formation of the charity supergroup Band Aid and the No.1 single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" as well as the Live Aid concerts the following year.
Following the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on 31 October, coverage of her funeral is televised by the BBC and ITV.
The strike at Thames Television finally ends, after 62 film editors agree to the new conditions while the ACTT agrees as well to start negotiations about the introductions of new technology. Additional episodes of network productions are screened to help clear the backlog.[24]
7 November – BBC1 starts airing season 8 of the American drama series Dallas.
1 December – The Cable Authority comes into existence and on 1 January 1985 it takes over the functions granted to it by the Cable and Broadcasting Act 1984, paving the way for fully commercial cable franchises to be awarded on a city-by-city basis.
18 December – Bruce Lee's 1973 martial arts action film Enter the Dragon is shown on ITV in its full uncut version; however all subsequent airings would be censored.
21 December – Children's programme Crackerjack ends after 29 series and nearly 3 decades.
Telstar TV, the UK's first pirate television station goes on the air in Birmingham. The channel broadcasts for about eight weeks on the BBC2 transmitter in the Northfield and Rubery areas of the city, showing a mixture of films and music videos after BBC2 closes at weekends. It goes unnoticed by the authorities for several weeks much to their embarrassment.[31]
^Minto, Veronica (19 February 1984). "Britain's First Pirate TV Station". West Indian World. No. 650. Freespace.virgin.net. Archived from the original on 17 October 2012. Retrieved 19 February 2012.
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