The cast of The Brady Bunch reunited for the TV movie The Brady Girls Get Married. Although scheduled to be shown in its original full-length movie format, NBC at the last minute divided it into half-hour segments. NBC showed one part per week for three weeks, and the fourth week debuted a spin-off sitcom titled The Brady Brides. This proved to be the only time the entire cast worked together on a single project following the cancellation of the original series.
ComedianAndy Kaufman disrupted sketches and started a brawl while broadcasting during ABC's sketch series Fridays, an occurrence that was later disclosed to have been entirely staged.[3]
February 21
During an improvised segment at the end of a Saturday Night Live telecast on NBC hosted by Charlene Tilton, Charles Rocket used the word "fuck". As a result of the ensuing controversy, he was fired, along with producer Jean Doumanian and most of his fellow cast members, bringing an early end to a season that had been heavily criticized and sunk in the ratings.[4]
The iconic 1950s sitcom Dennis the Menace began its first transmission in Ireland when the series went on the air on RTÉ Television.
March 30
An assassination attempt against PresidentRonald Reagan in Washington, DC, in which the President and several other people were wounded, interrupted programming on the three major networks and CNN at 2:42 pm. Millions of viewers worldwide witnessed footage of the shooting and the chaos that followed. ABC News was flooded with unconfirmed reports, which pestered the chief anchor Frank Reynolds, one of which falsely stated that the President's press secretary James Brady had died in the shooting. This was also reported by CBS News and ABC News. Coverage of the assassination attempt continued for hours on the big three networks, and for two days on CNN. As a result, the Academy Awards were postponed for a day.
The season-four finale of Dallas, entitled "Ewing-Gate", aired on CBS.
May 5–14
The NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and Houston Rockets was broadcast on CBS. This was the last NBA Finals to be broadcast on tape-delay, with weeknight games airing after the late local news in most cities. Games 3 and 4 were played back-to-back on Saturday and Sunday, May 9 and 10, to give CBS two live Finals games. Game 3 was the last Finals contest played on a Saturday until Game 5 in 2021. Game 4 tipped off at noon Central (1 pm Eastern/10 am Pacific) for CBS to telecast golf following the game. Had Game 7 been played, it would have tipped off at 1 pm Eastern. All in all, the Finals drew a 6.7 rating, according to Nielsen Media Research. Consequently, this was the lowest-rated NBA Finals in history prior to 2003.
Following a two-month-long players strike, Major League Baseball resumed with the All-Star Game from Cleveland on NBC. During the strike (which began on June 12 and lasted through July 31),[5] NBC used its Saturday Game of the Week time-slot to show a 20-minute strike update, followed by a sports anthology series hosted by Caitlyn Jenner (then Bruce)[6] called NBC Sports: The Summer Season.[7][8]
August 30
In Baltimore, Maryland, CBS affiliate WMAR-TV swapped affiliations with NBC affiliate WBAL-TV, marking the first affiliation switch in that city. CBS cited weak ratings for WMAR-TV's newscasts and heavy pre-emptions of network programming for programs of local interest as the reason they chose to switch affiliations. (However, the NBC affiliation would return to WBAL-TV on January 2, 1995, with WMAR-TV switching to ABC, and WJZ-TV, which had been the city's only ABC affiliate at this point, switching to CBS.)
WRGB in Schenectady, New York, NBC's first television affiliate, ended its 42-year relationship with the network (dating back to its days as experimental station W2XB) and swapped affiliations with CBS affiliate WAST, which changed its call letters to the current WNYT to mark the new affiliation.
John Carpenter's 1978 horror film Halloween made its broadcast network television premiere on NBC (the same day that its first sequel was released in theaters and the day before star Donald Pleasenceguest-hosted NBC's Saturday Night Live). To fill the two-hour time slot, Carpenter filmed 12 minutes of additional material during the production of Halloween II. The newly filmed scenes[10] include Dr. Loomis at a hospital board review of Michael Myers and Dr. Loomis talking to a then-6-year-old Michael at Smith's Grove, telling him, "You've fooled them, haven't you, Michael? But not me." Another extra scene featured Dr. Loomis at Smith's Grove examining Michael's abandoned cell after his escape and seeing the word "Sister" scratched into the door. Finally, a scene was added in which Lynda comes over to Laurie's house to borrow a silk blouse before Laurie leaves to babysit, just as Annie telephones asking to borrow the same blouse. The new scene had Laurie's hair hidden by a towel, since Jamie Lee Curtis was by then wearing a much shorter hairstyle than she had worn in 1978.
October 31
The punk rock band Fear's appearance on Saturday Night Live included a group of slamdancers, among them John Belushi, Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat (and later Fugazi), Tesco Vee of the Meatmen, Harley Flanagan and John Joseph of the Cro-Mags, and John Brannon of Negative Approach. The show's director originally wanted to prevent the dancers from participating, so Belushi offered to be in the episode if the dancers were allowed to stay. The result was the shortening of Fear's appearance on TV. Fear played "I Don't Care About You", "Beef Bologna", and "New York's Alright If You Like Saxophones", and started to play "Let's Have a War" when the telecast faded into commercial. The slamdancers left ripe pumpkin remains on the set. Cameras, a piano, and other property were damaged.
November 1
The NBC soap opera The Doctors broadcast its 5,000th episode.
November 2
The CBS soap opera As the World Turns debuted a new opening sequence and theme song for the first time in its 25-year history.
The cast and crew of The Incredible Hulk were delivered a surprise; despite maintaining good ratings, The Incredible Hulk was cancelled immediately, despite executive producer Kenneth Johnson's attempts to convince CBS to buy six additional episodes to fill season five.
Luke and Laura's wedding on the ABC soap opera General Hospital became one of the most-watched weddings in American television history, second only to the wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer.
KJAA in Lubbock, Texas, signed on the air as an independent station. It adopted its current call letters KJTV in 1985 and became a charter Fox affiliate the next year.
Raleigh's first independent station WLFL-TV went on the air. It became a Fox affiliate in 1986, moving to The WB in 1998, and finally with The CW in 2006.
Chuck Woolery hosted his last episode of the NBC game show Wheel of Fortune, quitting after a salary dispute with series producer and creator Merv Griffin. The next Monday, December 28, Pat Sajak began hosting.
