1963 in television

The year 1963 involved some significant events in television. Below are lists of notable TV-related events.

Events
January 13 – BBC Television broadcasts the play The Madhouse on Castle Street in the Sunday-Night Theatre strand. The play co-stars a young American folk music singer named Bob Dylan. April 1 – German terrestrial channel ZDF (pronounced tseht-day-ehf) began broadcasting. May 15 – First television pictures transmitted from a US manned space capsule ("Faith 7"). Due to the poor picture quality, only NBC carries the transmission, and on tape-delay, not live. July 22 – Bob Crane quits his DJ job at radio station KNX to become a regular on The Donna Reed Show. September 2 – CBS Evening News becomes network television's first half-hour weeknight news broadcast, when the show is lengthened from 15 to 30 minutes. September 9 – NBC also expands its evening network news program to 30 minutes. September 27 – The Littlest Hobo debuts on TV across North America with the first episode entitled "Blue Water Sailor". September 29 – The Judy Garland Show debuts on CBS. September 30 – BBC Television begins using a globe as their symbol. They would continue to use it in varying forms until 2002. October 1 – ABC News at last drops its dependence on outside sources of news film and begins to rely on its own camera crews. November 22 – All three major U.S. networks start pre-emptions for a week following the news of John F. Kennedy's assassination. The pre-emptions unofficially begin a few minutes after Kennedy was shot; on the top-rated American soap opera As the World Turns, Nancy Hughes (Helen Wagner) was in the middle of a discussion with Grandpa (Santos Ortega) about Bob's (Don Hastings) decision to invite Lisa (Eileen Fulton) to Thanksgiving dinner. Walter Cronkite interrupted Wagner mid-speech to deliver the bulletin. As the World Turns continued for one more scene (at that time, the show was transmitted live) before Cronkite cut in permanently. News of the assassination, and later the funeral procession, were the first television broadcasts across the Pacific Ocean (via Relay 1 satellite). November 23 – UK BBC tv That Was The Week That Was broadcasts its famous dramatic Kennedy tribute episode. William Hartnell stars in the very first episode of Doctor Who (An Unearthly Child). So many people complained of having missed it (because of the disruption to schedules caused by the assassination) that the following Saturday episode 1 was repeated before the broadcast of episode 2. November 24 – Jack Ruby murders John F. Kennedy's suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald live on television. December 7 – Instant Replay is used for the first time during the live transmission of the Army Navy Game by its inventor, director, Tony Verna. For the first time, most Americans say that they get more of their news from television than newspapers. The television remote control is authorized by the FCC.

Debuts

 * 1) Doctor Who

Ending this year
Date

Show

Debut

April 2 Hawaiian Eye 1959 May 14 Empire 1962 May 21 Laramie 1959 The Voice of Firestone 1949 June 20 Leave It to Beaver 1957 June 23 The Real McCoys