| Date | Event |
| January 2 | Oprah Winfrey takes over as host of WLS-TV's A.M. Chicago, which would serve as a forerunner to her nationwide, syndicated talk show. |
| January 9 | Wendy's "Fluffy Bun" advertisement is first broadcast, which gains Clara Peller and her "Where's the beef?" catchphrase national fame. |
| Something About Amelia, a story concerning incest, is broadcast by ABC. Glenn Close, Ted Danson, and Roxana Zal are the main actors. |
| January 22 | During CBS's broadcast of Super Bowl XVIII, Apple Computer Company heralds the introduction of its Apple Macintosh personal computer with the famous advertisement "1984", the only time it is broadcast on national television. |
| January 23 | Professional wrestler Hulk Hogan defeats The Iron Sheik to win his first World Wrestling Federation championship at Madison Square Garden; the match is televised by the MSG Network. |
| January 26 | Andy Kaufman makes what turns out to be his final television appearance as host of The Top. |
| January 27 | Michael Jackson's hair catches fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial. |
| January 30 | One of Field Communications' last stations, WKBD-TV, is sold to Cox Enterprises. |
| February 1 | Arts & Entertainment Network launches from the merger of ARTS and RCA's The Entertainment Channel. It originally broadcasts after kids' channel Nickelodeon signs off. |
| Lifetime is launched from the merger of Hearst/ABC's Daytime and Viacom's Cable Health Network. |
| In Bakersfield, California, CBS affiliate KPWR-TV changes its call letters to the current KGET-TV, in preparation for an affiliation swap with NBC affiliate KERO-TV the following month. |
| February 10 | NBC airs the made-for-television movie Little House: The Last Farewell. Serving to tie up loose ends to storylines on the main Little House on the Prairie series, The Last Farewell concerns Charles and Caroline deciding to visit Walnut Grove. They learn that a railroad tycoon actually holds the deed to the township, and he wants to take it over for his own financial gain. Despite their best efforts, the townspeople are unable to drive the businessman away. At a town meeting, John Carter offers a supply of explosives that he has. Each man takes a turn blowing up his own building in an emotional farewell to the town.[1] |
| February 20 | 17 of the 24 added minutes are utilized by ABC for the network television premiere of Superman II. Subsequent ABC airings of the longer version would be cut further for more advertising time. The full 146-minute extended cut was shown internationally, including parts of Canada. As with the first film, Alexander and Ilya Salkind prepared a version for worldwide television release that re-inserted unused footage (in this case 24 minutes) into the film. It was through this extended version that viewers first caught a glimpse into the Superman II that might have happened had Richard Donner remained as director. In fact, a majority of the added footage was shot by Donner before Richard Lester became director. |
| February 25 | Eddie Murphy participates in his final live episode as a cast member on NBC's Saturday Night Live. The remainder of his appearances for the season would only be in the form of previously recorded sketches. Murphy's final overall episode as a cast member would air on April 14. |
| February 26 | KDRV in Medford, Oregon signs on as an ABC affiliate, giving the Medford market full-time access to all three networks for the first time. |
| CBS airs the network broadcast television premiere of Star Wars. |
| February 28 | At the 26th Grammy Awards telecast by CBS, Michael Jackson wins a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards. |
| March 16 | Gary Plauché shoots and kills Jeff Doucet, who had kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and molested Plauché's son, Jody. The killing was captured on camera by a local news crew. Doucet was flown back from California to Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport, also known as Ryan Field, to face trial. Doucet arrived and was led in handcuffs by police officers through the airport at around 9:30 p.m., where Plauché was waiting for Doucet with a gun. Plauché was friends with several high-ranking police officers in the Baton Rouge Police Department; while many people believed that these contacts told Plauché where and when Doucet would be arriving, it was actually an employee of the local ABC affiliate WBRZ-TV who gave Plauché the information. A news crew from WBRZ-TV was also waiting for Doucet and had set up their cameras to record his arrival. |
| March 19 | Denver's ABC affiliate KBTV changes its name to KUSA-TV to reflect its status with USA Today. |
| March 21 | New England Sports Network, initially known as NESN is initiated. |
| March 25 | WNOL-TV, an independent station goes on the air in New Orleans. |
| March 28 | Actress Jeanne Cooper has her own real life facelift procedure performed onscreen during an episode of The Young and the Restless. Cooper's character, Katherine Chancellor is written as having the exact same procedure performed. |
| April 1 | Nickelodeon celebrates its 5th anniversary. |
| April 7 | After being cancelled by ABC following its third season, Too Close for Comfort with the aid of Metromedia, is revived for the first-run syndicated market. |
| April | John Houlihan wins the Natural Triple Jackpot worth $26,550 on The Joker's Wild, the largest such win on the show. |
| May 6 | Minneapolis/St. Paul religious station WFBT converts to a general entertainment station after the Beverly Hills Hotel Corporation bought out the station, changing the calls to KITN-TV. |
| May 8 | Happy Days airs its series finale, "Passages". However, five additional episodes would air from the end of June on through the end of September. The last episode to be aired on ABC, "Fonzie's Spots", is actually #251 in chronological order. |
| May 18 | Character Bobby Ewing finds himself in the crossfire as a rival tries to gun down his brother J.R. on the season finale of the CBS series Dallas. |
| May 19 | CBS tapes the Michael Larson episodes of Press Your Luck in which Larson wins $110,237 cash and prizes. (The episodes, which are split into two parts, would air on June 8 and 11.) |
| May 20 | The wedding between Steve Andropoulos and Betsy Stewart on As the World Turns attracts 20 million viewers. This makes it the second highest-rated hour in American daytime soap opera history behind Luke and Laura's 1981 wedding on General Hospital. |
| June 8 | Piedmont Triad station WJTM-TV changes its name to WNRW-TV to honor the death of William N. Rismiller in a shooting incident at its studios June 5. |
| June 23 | On a broadcast of NBC's Game of the Week between the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals, Cubs second baseman Ryne Sandberg hits two crucial, game tying home runs off of Cardinals closer Bruce Sutter in both the bottom of the ninth and tenth innings. The Cubs would go on to win the game in eleven innings, by the score of 12–11. Bob Costas and Tony Kubek were on the call for what would soon become known as "The Sandberg Game". |
| June 27 | The U.S. Supreme Court rules in NCAA v. Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma that the National Collegiate Athletic Association's television plan violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. As a result, individual schools and athletic conferences are free to negotiate contracts on their own behalf. Together with the growth of cable television, this ruling results in the explosion of broadcast options currently available. Beginning in 1984, the College Football Association sells a television package to ABC and CBS. The Big Ten and Pacific-10 conferences sell their own separate package to ABC. |
| July 14 | In what became known as "Black Saturday", Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation takes over Superstation WTBS' Saturday evening time period once occupied by Georgia Championship Wrestling. |
| July 17 | CBS broadcasts W*A*L*T*E*R, a television pilot for the third spin-off of M*A*S*H. The pilot stars Gary Burghoff, who reprises his M*A*S*H character Corporal Walter "Radar" O'Reilly. Since the pilot is never picked up by CBS as a series, it is shown as a "CBS Special Presentation". It is shown once in the Eastern and Central time zones of the United States, but pre-empted on the West Coast by CBS News coverage of the Democratic National Convention. This is the only known broadcast of the pilot.[2] |
| July 23 | MTV broadcasts the live World Wrestling Federation event "The Brawl to End It All" from Madison Square Garden in New York City, where Wendi Richter won the WWF Women's Championship from The Fabulous Moolah. |
| July 28 | ABC begins their coverage of the Summer Olympic Games from Los Angeles. Jim McKay and Peter Jennings served as hosts for the opening ceremonies. This is to date, the final time that ABC would broadcast the Summer Olympics. All subsequent, American network television coverage of the Summer games would be handled by NBC. |
| July 30 | The soap opera Santa Barbara debuts on NBC. |
| Dallas/Ft. Worth independent station KNBN-TV changes its call letters to KRLD-TV after being bought out by Metromedia. |
| September 9 | The Tyler-Longview market's lone television station KLTV finally receives competition when KLMG-TV (now Fox affiliate KFXK-TV) signs-on and takes KLTV's secondary CBS affiliation. |
| September 10 | The game show Jeopardy! returns to television as a syndicated show with new host Alex Trebek. |
| September 14 | Dan Aykroyd and Bette Midler host the first MTV Video Music Awards at New York City's Radio City Music Hall, an event which included Madonna's performance of the song "Like a Virgin". |
| September 16 | The two hour pilot episode of Miami Vice airs on NBC. This episode started developing the trademark Vice style.[3] Aspects of Miami Vice considered revolutionary lay in its music, cinematography, and imagery, which made large segments of each episode resemble a protracted music video. |
| September 17 | The Transformers debuts in syndication. |
| September 18 | The series finale of Three's Company airs on ABC following a three-episode story arc that also sets up the spin-off Three's a Crowd. |
| September 20 | The Cosby Show debuts on NBC. Meanwhile on ABC, the pilot episode for Who's the Boss? is also broadcast. |
| September 24 | The game show Super Password premieres on NBC at 12:00 noon EST. The new version of the classic game show is one of the few shows to survive at a time period that normally broadcasts news on any of the three major networks, running for 4+1⁄2 years. |
| CBS affiliate WJKA (now Fox affiliate WSFX-TV) in Wilmington, North Carolina signs-on the air, giving Wilmington in-market affiliates of all three commercial networks. |
| September 27 | Kelsey Grammer makes his first appearance as Frasier Crane in the third-season premiere of Cheers. |
| October 1 | Montana, the last state in the Union without its own PBS station, gains one when Montana PBS launches. |
| Nickelodeon retires their silver pinball logo (although it would continue to be used in sign-offs until early 1985) and begins using the orange splat as their logo. |
| American Movie Classics is initiated. |
| October 8 | NBC broadcasts The Burning Bed, which features Farrah Fawcett as a woman who kills her abusive husband. The fact-based film is the highest-rated entertainment event of the 1984–1985 season. |
| October 11 | Geraldine Ferraro becomes the first woman (and the only one until Sarah Palin in 2008) to participate in a presidential or vice presidential debate. |
| October 12 | Tragedy strikes the CBS drama Cover Up. During filming for the seventh episode of the series, "Golden Opportunity," on Stage 17 of the 20th Century Fox lot, a scene is shot that calls for Mac Harper (Jon-Erik Hexum) to load bullets into a .44 Magnum handgun. Hexum is duly provided with a functional gun and blanks. The scene does not play as the director wanted it to in the master shot, causing a delay in filming. During the delay, Hexum, restless and impatient, begins playing around to lighten the mood. Unloading all but one (blank) round, Hexum spins the gun, and—simulating Russian roulette—puts the revolver to his right temple and pulls the trigger,[4] apparently unaware of the danger. At a close enough range, the effect of the powder gasses is a small explosion, so although the paper wadding in the blank that Hexum discharged did not penetrate his skull, there was enough blunt force trauma to shatter a quarter-sized piece of his skull and propel the pieces into his brain, causing massive hemorrhaging.[5][6] Hexum is then rushed to Beverly Hills Medical Center, undergoing five hours of surgery to repair his wounds.[6] Six days later, on October 18, Hexum is declared brain dead at age 26. |
| October 27 | Turner Broadcasting System initiates the Cable Music Channel in the U.S., only to end it one month later. |
| November 10 | On PBS Sesame Street celebrates its 15th anniversary. |
| November 12 | Theresa Saldana appears as herself in the NBC movie Victims for Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story, a retelling of her 1982 stabbing incident and its aftermath. |
| December 8 | The final episode of Captain Kangaroo airs. This ends a 29-year run on CBS that made it the longest-running nationally broadcast children's television program of its day. |
| December 15 | One year after officially departing the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live, Eddie Murphy returns to guest host. This would be Murphy's last appearance on the show (not counting a brief appearance during SNL's 40th Anniversary Special in 2015) until hosting again during the forty-fifth season in 2019. |
| December 17 | George C. Scott plays Ebenezer Scrooge in a new version of the Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, broadcast by CBS. |
| The ABC soap opera One Life to Live changes its opening sequence and theme song, which lasted until 1991. |
| ABC purchases a majority stake of ESPN from Getty Oil Corp. |
| KLDO-TV in Laredo, Texas signs-on as an ABC affiliate, giving Laredo in-market affiliates of all three commercial networks (it is now an Univision affiliate). |
| December 28 | On ABC, The Edge of Night ends its 28-year run. The soap opera started on CBS in 1956, moving to ABC in 1975. |
| During an interview backstage at Madison Square Garden for the ABC newsmagazine 20/20, reporter John Stossel tells professional wrestler David Schultz that he thought pro wrestling was fake. Schultz responds by hitting Stossel in the head twice, knocking him to the floor each time.[7] The attack attracts a large amount of media coverage and is later aired not only on 20/20, but also on other national television outlets. ABC itself later reports receiving more than 1,000 calls from viewers inquiring about Stossel's health. |
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