1979 In Television ,
Other Events Of 1980 ,
1981 In Television and the
List Of 'years In Television' .
''For the American network television schedule, please see 1980-81 American Network Television Schedule .''
- February 1 - The Soap Opera '' Love Of Life '' airs its last episode, after twenty-nine years on the air.
- February 14 - Walter Cronkite announces his retirement from the '' CBS Evening News ''.
- February 15 - New Zealand 's Television One and Television Two go to air under the newly formed Television New Zealand .
- March 21 - On the season finale of the soap opera '' Dallas '', the infamous character J.R. Ewing is shot by an unseen assailant leading to the Catchphrase "Who Shot JR?"
- April 4 - Violet Carson makes her last appearance as Ena Sharples on '' Coronation Street ''.
- April 7 - '' The Oldest Living Graduate '', a live drama on NBC , is broadcast; the network had not aired a program like it since 1962 . The production is aired from Southern Methodist University and stars Henry Fonda , George Grizzard , and Cloris Leachman .
- May 24 - The Not Ready For Prime Time Players appear in their final episode on '' Saturday Night Live '', and many feel it is the end of an era for the venerable series.
- June 1 - The Cable News Network (CNN) begins broadcasting.
- Summer - SAG and AFTRA go out on strike, stalling television premieres in the United States for many months. Some television shows were permitted to begin airing in late October while still other shows were delayed until January 1981 .
- July 18 - Brazil 's TV Tupi network ends operations.
- August 1 - After a failed experiment, the soap opera '' Another World '' airs its last regularly scheduled ninety-minute episode. The show returns to sixty minutes on August 4 .
- December 9 - The cult single drama '' The Flipside Of Dominick Hide '' is first broadcast as part of the '' Play For Today '' series on BBC1.
- December 30 - After 26 years on the air and 20 seasons on one network, NBC announces that the longest-running prime-time TV series, '' Disney's Wonderful World '', will not be on the network's fall 1981 schedule. It will be picked up by CBS .
- '' The David Letterman Show '' debuts on NBC. Letterman's humor does not go over well with a morning audience, and the show is soon cancelled. Letterman would go on to host a late night show two years later.
- US viewers get caught up in the "Who Shot J.R.?" cliff hanger on the soap opera series, ''Dallas'', which is solved on a November 21 episode, drawing a record numbers of viewers.
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