The year involved some significant events.
Below is a list of Television -related events in 2004 .
''For the American TV schedule, see: 2004-05 United States Network Television Schedule .''
- January 1 - Carrie's War starring Keeley Fawcett airs on UK television.
- January 30 - ITV 's News At Ten ends for a second time, with its replacement, the News At Ten Thirty , launches on Monday .
- February 2 - ITV Plc is formed from the merger of Carlton and Granada . The News at Ten Thirty also debuts.
- February 9 - Kerry McFadden wins the third series of ITV1 's '' I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! ''. 15.3 million watch the final, the programme's highest rated episode to this day.
- March 1 - '' The Price Is Right '' airs its 6,000th episode.
- March 15 - Game Show Network rebranded as "GSN"
- March 20 - Christopher Eccleston is announced as the Doctor Who .
- March 28 - Māori Television starts broadcasting in New Zealand .
- April 2 to 8 - TV Tokyo in Japan premières eight shows during the first week of the month.
- April 17 - Cartoon Network 's Toonami moves from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. (prime time) and extends by four hours (from two to six).
- April 21 - '' Blue Heelers '' screens a live episode.
- May 6 - '' Friends '' airs its final episode.
- May 13 - '' Frasier '' airs its final episode, "Goodnight Seattle".
- May 15 - Jimmy Fallon makes his last appearance as a Cast Member of '' Saturday Night Live '' on its Season Finale .
- May 28 - TechTV merges with G4 to form G4techTV , one of the most controversial mergers in television history as Less Than A Year Later , the merged network becomes G4 once again.
- June 2 - A contestant on '' Jeopardy! '', Ken Jennings of Salt Lake City , Utah , begins a long run as champion.
- June 4 - Kitten Pinder is evicted from the '' Big Brother UK '' house, shouting against the Queen and the Aristocracy on the way out.
- June 14 - Quiz TV launches in the UK , the country's first phone-in quiz channel. Many more launched over the next few years, though Quiz TV itself would close down in 2006 .
- June 17 - In the UK, the live feed of ''Big Brother'' is taken off air for a few hours as the housemates threaten to kill each other.
- September - with the start of the 2004-2005 Television Season in the United States , most of the major networks were now no longer producing original content for broadcast on Saturday nights, citing years of declining ratings. Beginning this season, Saturday becomes primarily a night for rebroadcasts of episodes from earlier in the week or movies. FOX Network is an exception, as it maintains its block of inexpensive, reality-based shows on Saturday.
- September 21 - Drew Daniel is crowned the winner of the American version of '' Big Brother 5 ''. Runner-Up Michael "Cowboy" Ellis wins $50,000.
- September 28 - Longtime veteran Marcy Walker makes what has been termed by soap sources as her final appearance on '' All My Children '' after two decades of being affiliated with the program.
- October 2 - Amy Poehler succeeds Jimmy Fallon as Tina Fey 's co-anchor on NBC 's Saturday Night Live 's Weekend Update skit, making the first Weekend Update female duos.
- November - Toon Disney removes a great number of the programs it was originally intended to show in order to make room for Jetix .
- November 1 - '' The Young And The Restless '' airs its milestone 8,000th episode.
- November 7 - '' Dallas '' airs a special nondescript series entitled: ''Dallas Reunion: Return to Southfork''.
- November 18 - The video for the new charity single '' Do They Know It's Christmas? '' by Band Aid 20 airs simultaneously on all five main UK television networks, as well as over twenty satellite and cable stations. This unprecedented broadcast attracts over fourteen million viewers between 5:50 and 6 p.m..
- November 30 - After seventy-four consecutive wins, Ken Jennings finally loses on ''Jeopardy!'', to competitor Nancy Zerg .
- November - ''All My Children'' rises to #2 in the daytime Nielsen Ratings for the first time since the mid- 1990s , rivaling ABC 's soap '' General Hospital '' for the second slot.
- December 1 - Tom Brokaw steps down as anchorman of '' NBC Nightly News '' and is replaced by Brian Williams .
- December 6 - Joe Pasquale wins the fourth series of ITV1 's '' I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! ''
- December 15 - CNN 's financial news channel, CNNfn , signs off.
- December 16 - '' All My Children '' airs its milestone 9,000th episode.
- December 29 - Rogers Media buys remaining 20% ownership of Rogers Sportsnet from FOX 's Los Angeles affiliate KTTV .
- General Electric , owner of NBC , purchases Universal Studios from Vivendi , leaving all six U.S. broadcast networks part of a company which also owns a film studio.
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