Carlton Television takes over the weekday ITV franchise in London at midnight, replacing Thames after 24 years on the air. Meridian takes over the South of England franchise from TVS, Westcountry takes over the South West England franchise from TSW, Good Morning Television, GMTV takes over the national breakfast television franchise from TV-am at 6am and Teletext Ltd takes over the teletext franchise from ORACLE. The first edition of GMTV is presented by Eamonn Holmes and Anne Davies.
The Independent Television Commission removes the limit on the value of prizes which can be given away on ITV game shows, set at £6,000 per episode since 1981, paving the way for the big money game shows of the late 1990s and 2000s.
Channel 4 becomes an independent statutory corporation. Under the terms of the Broadcasting Act 1990, the channel is now also allowed to sell its own airtime. Under the Act, ITV have agreed to fund Channel 4 if it falls below 14% of total TV advertising revenue. The channel also makes a payment of £38 million to ITV under terms of its funding formula.[1]
The London News Network, a joint venture between London's two franchise holders, Carlton and LWT, begins providing a seven-day news service for ITV viewers in London.
Scottish Television launches new idents and presentation.[2]
HTV launches a new logo and idents.
2 January – Debut of the Saturday morning children's show Saturday Disney on ITV.
3 January
The Central-produced children's series Tots TV makes its debut on ITV and starts airing in the US the following day. Its sponsor is Lego Duplo.
Scottish Television launches a 30-minute lunchtime edition of Scotland Today.
Launch of the ITV regional news programme London Tonight which airs seven days a week on both Carlton and LWT.
Ulster's news service is renamed UTV Live. The programme broadcasts for 60 minutes, instead of 30.
The BBC launches Business Breakfast as a 60-minute stand-alone programme. It had previously been part of Breakfast News. Consequently, the BBC's weekday breakfast programmes start half an hour earlier, at 6am. Also on that day, BBC1 begins broadcasting on weekdays at 6am. A start-of-day Ceefax broadcast is retained although it now runs for 15 minutes rather than 30, beginning at 5:45am.
6 January
The Times reports that IFE have revised and increased their offer to purchase former ITV franchise holder TVS.[4][5]
Debut of the acclaimed series Fame in the 20th Century, an eight-part BBC1 programme in which Clive James examines the nature of 20th century fame using archive footage and commentary.[7] The series concludes on 24 February.[8]
8 January
ITV begins reairing series 3 of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends. However, the first few episodes are trimmed to fit the timeslot.
The children's comedy programme ZZZap! makes its debut on Children's ITV, starring the 'show you how its done gloves', known as the Handymen, Richard Waites as the trouble-causing Cuthbert Lilly and the sneaky villain Tricky Dicky, and Neil Buchanan as the smartest artist Smart Arty.
ITV introduces a third weekly episode of The Bill on Friday evenings.
11 January – Debut of The Good Sex Guide, a ground-breaking late night documentary series on ITV presented by Margi Clarke.[9][10][11] Aired at 10.35pm, the programme attracts audience of 13 million, something that is unprecedented for a show aired in a late night timeslot.[12]
14 January – Eurosport and Screensport propose a merger to provide a single channel as both are operating at a loss, hoping that a merged channel would become financially profitable.[13]
7 February – Having completed its initial run of all 692 episodes of Prisoner: Cell Block H in December 1991, Central begins rerunning the series from the first episode. It is shown weekly, late on Sunday evenings until the end of 1994.
12–14 February – Channel 4 airs Love Weekend, a series of programmes with sexually explicit content coinciding with Valentine's Day weekend. It includes the network television premiere of Last Tango in Paris, starring Marlon Brando, which is aired uncut on 14 February, Valentine's Day itself.[17] The makers of Tango pay £20,000 for a 30-second advert for the soft drink in the film's first ad break.[18]
16 February – The final episode of Count Duckula is broadcast on ITV.
17 February – The original scheduled airdate for Mind the Baby, Mr. Bean, but it is postponed following the murder of Kirkby toddler James Bulger and is delayed for over a year until 25 April the following year. Instead, Mr. Bean in Room 426 is shown in its place.
27 February – Boiling Point, an episode of the BBC medical drama Casualty, is broadcast,[22] but it is met with great controversy and outrage after it depicts rioting youths setting fire to a hospital's accident and emergency department. The BBC receives over 700 complaints about the violent nature of the episode, despite it airing after the 9pm watershed and warning viewers accordingly. However, the episode achieves viewing figures of 17.02 million, the highest for the show at this time.
28 February – BBC1 airs the first in a twelve-part adaptation of Peter Mayle's memoir A Year in Provence.[23] The series, starring John Thaw and Lindsay Duncan, concludes on 16 May.[24] Unlike the book, however, the miniseries is not well received by critics and, in 2006, it is placed at number ten on a Radio Times list of the worst television programmes ever made.[25][26] The writer John Naughton describes it as a "smugathon ... which achieved the near impossible – creating a John Thaw vehicle nobody liked".[26]
Sky One airs Episodes 170 and 171 of the Australian soap E Street which features a hard-hitting storyline involving extreme character Sonny Bennett (Richard Huggett) who kills three characters in a car bomb explosion. Because the episodes air in an early evening timeslot, they are preceded by a warning to viewers that they contain scenes that some may find upsetting. The 12:30pm repeat the following days, 24 and 25 March are dropped entirely and are replaced by episodes of The Simpsons.
26 March – ITV airs The Final Straw, an episode of The Bill in which Detective Constable Viv Martella, played by Nula Conwell, is killed off when she is shot by a man after approaching the van in which he is sitting.
27 March – The network television premiere on BBC1 of the 1989 American gangster comedy Harlem Nights, starring Eddie Murphy.
28 March – The Bluebells' 1984 single Young at Heart reaches number one in the UK Singles Chart following a re-release after being featured in a Volkswagen Golf advert. It tops the charts for four weeks.
29 March – Central becomes the first ITV region to begin showing the New Zealand medical soap opera Shortland Street.
3 April – The 1993 Grand National, shown live on BBC1, is declared void after 30 of the 39 runners begin the race and carry on, despite there having been a false start.
4 April
Children's BBC begin to repeat the school drama Grange Hill from its first series in 1978 on Sunday mornings on BBC2, as part of the show's 15th anniversary celebrations. These repeats end in 1999 with series 16. Prior to the repeats, the US animated series Rugrats also begins airing today.[28][29]
5 April – The Children's Channel rebrands with a new series of idents depicting the live-action shots that shows the colours of blue, red and yellow and updates its new logo to be like the original one.
6 April – BBC1 airs This Is Michael Bolton, a recording of the singer in concert.[30]
11 April
BBC1 airs The Legend of Lochnagar, a special live-action/animated short film introduced by HRH The Prince of Wales; the prince narrates this story based on the 1980 fairytale children's book, which he made up for his younger brothers, about how an old man that lives in a cave behind Balmoral Castle is taught to care for the environment.
13 April – A new look is introduced across all the BBC's television news bulletins with a studio that is almost entirely computer-generated and features a glass model of the Corporation's coat of arms.
17 April
After six years, six series and 179 editions, BBC1 broadcasts the final episode of its Saturday morning children's series Going Live!.[31]
Arena presents a new four-part series, "Tales of Rock 'N' Roll", on BBC2 which looks at the story of four rock songs of how they came about and the history behind them and who and what they involved. Starting with Peggy Sue who was tracked down in Sacramento, California to be found running her own drain-clearing company Rapid Rooter and then to be taken back to Lubbock, Texas to recall how she knew Buddy Holly and how her marriage to drummer Jerry Allison turned out. Heartbreak Hotel where the song came to be written after the two songwriters discovered an article about a suicide in a hotel in Miami after reading about it in the Miami Herald. Walk on the Wild Side looks at all the characters that were involved in the song and how Lou Reed used to spend time at Andy Warhol's studio where they all did drugs (Holly Woodlawn and Joe Dallesandro were the only ones still around to tell the tale) and Highway 61 Revisited which looked at Bob Dylan's roots and everything connected with U.S. Route 61. The series ran for four consecutive weeks on Saturday nights on 17 April, 24 April, 1 May, and 8 May.
Pearson Television launches a friendly takeover bid for Thames Television, valuing the company at £99 million.[32]
Episode 1681 of Neighbours, the first that does not feature the 1980s-style titles and theme music, is shown in the UK, having made its debut in Australia on 18 May 1992.
Channel 4 airs Beyond Citizen Kane, a documentary film directed by Simon Hartog, produced by John Ellis and narrated by Chris Kelly. It details the dominant position of the Globo media group by founder Roberto Marinho and discusses the group's influence, power and political connections with the support of military dictatorship in Brazil.
11 May – BBC1's popular soap opera EastEnders is given its new title sequence which includes the updated map of London in full colour for the first time, and a brand new theme tune, introduced to give the programme a more modern feel, referred to as the "jazzy" version for its saxophone beats.
13 May – Peter Dean makes his final appearance as EastEnders market trader Pete Beale. The character goes on the run with an old flame with whom he has reconnected, only to discover she is married to a local gangster. Pete is killed off-screen on 16 December after the couple are killed in a car crash.
19 May – After ten years and ten series in its original run, the final edition of Blockbusters is broadcast on ITV. But it continues for one more series on Sky One a year later and the five ITV regions show this series until 1995. The game show will make sporadic returns on other channels, starting with a short-lived BBC version presented by Michael Aspel in 1997.
22 May – Stars in Their Eyes returns on ITV with new presenter Matthew Kelly who takes over the role from Leslie Crowther who is still recovering from head injuries received in a car crash the previous year. Changes to the show include a live final where viewers phone in to decide the winner of the series.
27 May – The final episode of the five-part BBC Schools French language adventure series La Marée et ses Secrets (The Tide and its Secrets) is broadcast, ending a run which began in 1984.[36][37]
1 June – S4C introduces a new series of idents which depicted inanimate objects as having characteristics of dragons as a reference to the red dragon on the flag of Wales.
2 June – Marcus Plantin, ITV's network director, announces the termination of Take the High Road from September 1993, as 'ITV's statisticians believed English audiences have had enough'[38] This results in public protest, as many believe that without ITV companies south of the border, the series had no chance.[39] The issue is raised in the House of Commons under an early day motions, and the Daily Record newspaper holds a protest as well.[40] By the end of June, Scottish Television decide to continue producing the series mainly for the Scottish market,[41] but within a month, nearly all the ITV companies reinstate it after viewers complain about the show being dropped in the first place.[42] At this point the series was shown on the ITV network on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons except for Scottish, Grampian and Border which showed the series on peak time slots and episodes were at least months ahead from the other regions.
4 June
When Roy Hattersley fails to appear on this day's edition of Have I Got News for You, the third time he has cancelled at the last minute. He is replaced with a tub of lard, credited as "The Rt. Hon. Tub of Lard MP", as it is "imbued with much the same qualities and liable to give a similar performance".[43]
At 6pm, UTV unveils a new logo. A new jingle is also introduced with a distinct Celtic sound.[44] On the same day, the extended studios at Havelock House are formally opened by presenter Gloria Hunniford.
6 June – The Animals of Farthing Wood makes its Irish debut in the on RTÉ. It still airs in this country to this day.
10 June – Les Dawson, the comedian who has presented the shows Jokers Wild, Blankety Blank and Fast Friends, dies suddenly from a heart attack during a medical check-up at a Greater Manchester hospital at the age of 62.
11 June – Channel 4 airs the final episodes of Cheers over three consecutive nights, finishing with the 80-minute finale on 13 June. However, due to the series popularity, repeats of the show begin the following weekend.[45]
28 June – Channel 4 airs the last programmes produced for the ITV Schools strand. However, the channel continues to produce its own schools programming for several years afterwards.
June – The BBC announces that it will freeze plans for new subscription services during its overnight downtime due to the service not being proftable. The BBC had planned up to 30 programmes but only four ever launched.[46]
BBC1 airs the final episode of Eldorado.[47] The soap has been axed due to poor ratings.
ITV finishes repeating the latest series of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends. The episode Thomas and Percy's Christmas Adventure has been excluded from this year's series of repeats.
22 July – Three former cable-only channels, Discovery, The Learning Channel and Bravo, begin broadcasting on the Astra satellite, ahead of the launch of the Sky Multichannels package on 1 September.
23 July – Prime Minister John Major gives an interview to ITN journalist Michael Brunson after his government wins a vote of confidence in the House of Commons earlier that day. During an unguarded moment following the interview and while still being recorded, Major refers to some of his cabinet colleagues as "Bastards".[50] The incident which becomes known in the media as "Bastardgate", prompts the tabloid newspapers The Daily Mirror and The Sun to set up phone lines with recordings of the conversation that readers are invited to call. Both newspapers are warned to discontinue the lines by the regulatory body, the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services because it feels that broadcasting the off-air conversation is a breach of privacy.[51]
24 July – The fourth series of ITV's Stars in Their Eyes concludes with the show's first live Grand Final, allowing viewers to vote for their favourite act. The series is won by Jacquii Cann, performing as Alison Moyet.
July – The ITC publishes the findings of a technical review of the future viability of launching a fifth television channel. By October, more than 70 parties have responded to its publication, including some expressing interest in running Channel 5 should the licence be readvertised.[52]
13–22 August – For the first time, British viewers are able to see full live coverage of the morning events of the World Athletics Championships. The full morning event coverage is broadcast on Eurosport, although the BBC does broadcast some live morning coverage.
18 August – ITV airs 15: The Life and Death of Philip Knight, Peter Kosminsky's drama-documentary film about a teenage man who took his own life in his cell at Swansea adult prison on 13 July 1990.
27 August – BBC1 airs a special live edition of Challenge Anneka in which Anneka Rice returns to some of the projects the show worked on to check on their progress.[55]
Sky Multichannels launches. Consequently, many satellite channels, including Sky One and UK Gold, are now only viewable on satellite as part of a pay television package. At the same time, new idents launch on Sky's main channels.
Three new channels launch - The Family Channel, Nickelodeon UK and UK Living and all three join the Sky Multichannels package. The Family Channel shares space with The Children's Channel which now ends its day two hours earlier, at 5pm.
2 September – Last network screening of Take the High Road. From the following week, the series will be screened times and days by most ITV regions after viewer complaints of why it was taken off. Carlton resumed the series in October and Central followed a month later, Only Yorkshire and Tyne Tees refused to reinstate the series although they later brought it back in 1996. [58] The Scottish ITV regions continue showing the series on primetime as normal.[59] ,
5 September
Debut of Karen Arthur's 1992 biographical miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream on ITV, focusing on the Jackson family and its popular Motown pop group. The second part airs on 8 September.
10 September – BBC2 begins showing the late-night Horror double bill movie series Dr. Terror's Vault of Horror, hosted by "Dr Walpurgis", played by Guy Henry. The first films shown are the 1986 comedy horror film Vamp, starring Grace Jones and the 1960 gothic horror The Mask of Satan.
Sky One moves E Street from its weekday early evening slot to a weekend daytime slot where it is shown in hour-long episodes on Saturdays from 6pm to 7pm and Sundays from 1pm to 2pm. The weekday 6:30pm slot is used to air episodes of Paradise Beach, but E Street is restored to the weekday slot in January 1994 after the move proves to be unpopular.
17 September – Cartoon Network and classic movie channel TNT launch in the UK. They share the same transponder with Cartoon Network broadcasting during the day and TNT broadcasting during the evening and overnight. The channels are free-to-air on satellite and are not part of the Sky Multichannels package.
Channel 4 airs Blue, a drama film directed by Derek Jarman who is partially blind and only able to see in shades of blue. BBC Radio 3 also broadcasts the film simultaneously so that viewers could hear the soundtrack in stereo.
20 September
The educational numeracy series Numbertime makes its debut on BBC2.
Schools programmes continue to be shown on Channel 4, now under the branding of Channel 4 Schools with new idents to accompany the change.
21 September – BBC1 airs A Murderer's Game, an edition of the Crimewatch File series looking at the 1992 hunt for the kidnapper of the Birmingham estate agent Stephanie Slater.[60]
22 September
The game show Lose A Million makes its debut on ITV, presented by Chris Tarrant with a voiceover by Honor Blackman, in which contestants win a total of £1 million and attempt to lose as many of them as possible by answering questions incorrectly. It is axed on 1 December, lasting only a single series.
BBC1 airs Hostage, an edition of the Inside Story strand, in which Terry Waite speaks about his years of captivity in Beirut.[61]
23 September – Debut of the popular children's educational series Come Outside on BBC2, starring Lynda Baron as Auntie Mabel alongside her dog Pippin.
24 September
The animated series Philbert Frog makes its debut on BBC1.
Channel 4 debuts the late night magazine topical programme Eurotrash, presented by Antoine de Caunes and Jean-Paul Gaultier, with narrative voiceovers by British comic actress Maria McErlane. The show features a comical review of unusual topics mainly from Western and Central Europe, with all intellectual property rights to the series controlled by the production company Rapido TV.
September – Scottish Television reschedules Emmerdale from 7pm to 5.10pm and uses the slot to broadcast daily regional programmes, including Take the High Road. This arrangement continues until early 1998 when Emmerdale is moved back to its original slot.
September–October – Channel 4 broadcasts live coverage of the Professional Chess Association version of the World Chess Championship 1993. Two hours of coverage are broadcast for each match. This is the first time that live chess has been broadcast in the UK.[62]
Super Channel is renamed as the NBC Super Channel following it being taken over by the US company General Electric, at this time parent of the NBC network.[64]
19 October – The last on-screen appearance of Roly, the EastEnders dog and Queen Vic resident who has been part of the soap since the first episode. The episode featuring his demise attracted an audience of 14.8 million viewers. The dog who played Roly dies during a heatwave on 2 August 1995.
20 October
Debut of Thatcher: The Downing Street Years, a four-part BBC1 series looking at the premiership of Margaret Thatcher.[65]
The Independent Television Commission issues Channel 4 with a formal warning for an episode of the soap Brookside which aired on 7 and 8 May that depicted a wife stabbing her abusive husband to death.[66]
21 October – Channel 4 is granted permission by the High Court to show excerpts from Stanley Kubrick's controversial 1971 film A Clockwork Orange as part of its Without Walls series. The film Forbidden Fruit, is shown on 26 October. Time Warner had sought to prevent Channel 4 from showing scenes from the film which has been banned in the UK since 1973 after Kubrick withdrew it amid concerns it was encouraging violence; the ban is lifted in 2000, a year after Kubrick's death.[67]
29 October – The final episode of the game show Every Second Counts is broadcast on BBC1.
2 November – Prime Minister John Major announces a review of the 1988 broadcasting voice ban, telling the House of Commons that broadcasters are stretching it "to the limit and perhaps beyond".[68]
7 November – The US animated series based on the popular Sega video game Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog makes its debut on Channel 4, two months after its US debut.
8 November – The first advert for an undertaker's is broadcast during an early evening episode of the Scottish soap opera Take the High Road on ITV.
9 November
It'll Never Work?, a children's series showcasing new inventions and developments in scientific technology, makes its debut on BBC1.[69]
Several schoolchildren are killed in a minibus crash on the M40. The incident is carried as the lead story on ITV's Early Evening News and News at Ten, while the BBC's Nine O'Clock News carries it as the third item, behind the State Opening of Parliament and a piece about the Troubles. The BBC's decision to put the item third attracts strong criticism from other journalists who question the reasoning behind it and accuse the BBC for being out of touch.[70]
19 November – Channel 4 airs the first "Late Licence" which is shown on Friday and Saturday nights until around 5am. The first "Late Licence" is presented by Smashie and Nicey with the strand showing repeats of the channel's programmes such as editions of The Word.[45]
20 November –
Leslie Crowther makes his first appearance since his accident on The Royal Variety Performance, appearing alongside Cilla Black.
22 November – On the 30th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Channel 4 airs the documentary As It Happened: The Killing of Kennedy which gives a minute-by-minute account of the events of 22 November 1963 with contributions from scores of eyewitnesses.[72]
23 November – 30th anniversary of the first broadcast of Doctor Who.
26–27 November – BBC1 airs the two-part Doctor Who special Dimensions in Time, a crossover with EastEnders. The episode is part of the 1993 Children in Need appeal and is the first new Doctor Who episode since the series ended in December 1989.[73][74]
29 November
The final edition of The Krypton Factor is broadcast on ITV after 16 years. It returns in 1995 with co-host Penny Smith and is briefly revived in 2009 and 2010 presented by Ben Shephard.
The three-part dramatisation of Carol Clewlow's 1989 erotic novel A Woman's Guide to Adultery makes its debut on ITV, starring Amanda Donohoe, Theresa Russell, Adrian Dunbar and Sean Bean. The serial concludes on 13 December.
"Mr Blobby", a novelty song inspired by the Noel's House Partycharacter of the same name, tops the UK Singles Chart. After being replaced a week later by Take That's "Babe", the song returns to the top to become the 1993 Christmas number one.[75][76]
The pilot episode for the comedy talk show Mrs Merton is shown by Granada Television with the titular character played by Caroline Aherne. It will be picked up for a full series on BBC2 in 1995.
6 December – ITV's North West England franchise holder Granada launches a hostile takeover for London Weekend Television, worth £600million. The takeover bid comes about because of the relaxation of the rules governing the network. LWT tries to outstep the takeover bid by initiating talks with Yorkshire Television and Scottish Television.[77]
13 December – The Times reports that a conflict of words has broken out between London Weekend Television and Granada over LWT's talks with Yorkshire Television. Granada claims the YTV-LWT deal is "something cobbled together by desperate men". Gerry Robinson, the Chairman of Granada plc is dismissive of the deal, especially since Yorkshire has made a £10million loss and is already paying much of its revenue to the government. Reports also suggest if LWT bid for Yorkshire Television it would also form an alliance with Anglia who would takeover Tyne Tees Television.[79]
18 December – BBC2 broadcasts the Arena special "Radio Night", an ambitious simulcast with BBC Radio 4.[80]
21 December – The Marcopolo 1 satellite is sold to Sweden's Nordic Satellite AB and is renamed Sirius 1.
22 December – Plato's Stepchildren, an episode of the US science-fiction series Star Trek, is shown on BBC2 for the first time, having not been seen on British television since its original run on BBC1.[81][82]
Channel 4 airs its first Alternative Christmas message. The broadcast features a contemporary, often controversial celebrity, delivering a message in the manner of The Queen. The first alternative message is delivered by Quentin Crisp.
The pilot episode for the comedy panel game show Shooting Stars is broadcast on BBC2, presented by Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer. It will return for a full series in 1995.
30 December
The Times reports that Granada has increased its takeover bid for LWT to £658million.[87]
Episodes of Emmerdale featuring the controversial plane crash storyline begin airing on ITV. The storyline was developed to win higher ratings for the series which has been threatened with cancellation due to low viewing figures. However, although it succeeds in turning around the fortunes of the series, ITV received many complaints about the timing of the story which comes shortly after the fifth anniversary of the Lockerbie disaster.
31 December
The first edition of the Scottish football-themed comedy sketch show Only an Excuse? is broadcast on BBC1 Scotland; it is subsequently aired each Hogmanay.[88]
20 May – Rik Mayall Presents (Anthology – 6 episodes: Micky Love, Briefest Encounter, Dancing Queen, The Big One, Dirty Old Town and Clair de Lune) (1993)
^Pearson, Allison (14 February 1993). "A nasty taste all over the body". The Independent on Sunday. Independent Print Limited. Archived from the original on 2022-05-01. Retrieved 9 July 2016.
^"Tabloid TV". The Independent. Independent Print Limited. 19 February 1993. Archived from the original on 2022-05-01. Retrieved 9 July 2016.
^ ab"Tabloid TV". The Independent. Independent Print Limited. 15 February 1993. Archived from the original on 2022-05-01. Retrieved 9 July 2016.
^Borrill, Rachel; Foley, Michael (3 November 1993). "Major seeks review of ban on NI terror group interviews". The Irish Times. The Irish Times Trust. p. 6.
^"It'll Never Work". 4 November 1993. p. 89. Retrieved 19 January 2019 – via BBC Genome.
