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The year 1966 in television involved some significant events. Below is a list of television-related events in that year.
Events
- January 3 – Hullabaloo shows promotional videos of The Beatles songs "Day Tripper" and "We Can Work It Out".
- January 8 – Shindig! airs for the last time on ABC, with musical guests the Kinks and the Who.
- January 11 – Dorothy Malone resumes the role of Constance Carson on Peyton Place (she had been temporarily replaced by Lola Albright).
- January 13 – Tabitha is born on the Bewitched episode titled, "And Then There Were Three."
- February 1 – KFBB-TV in Great Falls, Montana becomes the first station in that state to affiliate primarily with ABC.
- February 5 – ABC Scope begins to devote itself exclusively to coverage of the Vietnam war.
- February 13 - The Rolling Stones make another appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
- February 15 – Citing circumstances beyond his control, Fred Friendly resigns from CBS News.
- February 18 – An Evening with Carol Channing airs on CBS.
- February 23 – Television comes to Greece with the launch of ERT.
- February 27 – Perry Mason airs its only color episode, "The Case of the Twice-Told Twist."
- March 30 – The special Color Me Barbra, with Barbra Streisand, airs on CBS.
- April 18 – The Academy Awards air in color for the first time, on ABC.
- May 15 – The first Japanese popular Owarai variety show program, Shoten, debuts on Nippon Television Network, and will be watched by more than 25 million Japanese every week.
- June 5 – The Beatles make a taped appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, debuting their music videos for "Rain" and "Paperback Writer."
- June – ABS-CBN introduces color television to the Philippines, using NTSC.
- July 1 – Color television is launched in Canada in both English and French, also using NTSC.
- July 10 – Ultraman debuts on TBS in Japan. The character would spawn over 16 television adaptions over the next 40 years.
- July 16 – The Miss Universe pageant goes color.
- July 30 - An all-time record United Kingdom television audience of more than 32,000,000 watches the England national football team beat West Germany 4-2 to win the FIFA World Cup at Wembley.
- August 6 – In a post-fight interview, Howard Cosell honors Muhammad Ali's wishes to no longer be referred to as Cassius Clay, contrasting with the approach of most other sports reporters of the time.
- Summer – Patrick McGoohan quits the popular spy series Danger Man (aired in the US as Secret Agent) after filming only two episodes of the fourth season, in order to produce and star in The Prisoner, which begins filming in September.
- September 8 – The first episode of Star Trek ("The Man Trap") is aired.
- September 10 – A night of firsts for the Miss America Pageant—its first color TV broadcast and its first airing on NBC.
- September 11 - The Rolling Stones make another appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
- September 19 – Color television comes to Alaska as KENI-TV airs the premiere episode of That Girl ("Don't Just Do Something, Stand There", which had aired in the "lower 48" on September 8).
- October 2 – The four-part serial Talking to a Stranger, acclaimed as one of the finest British television dramas of the 1960s, begins transmission in the Theatre 625 strand on BBC2.
- October 6 – After quickly cancelling The Tammy Grimes Show, ABC fills the void by launching a prime-time edition of The Dating Game. The show's success leads to The Newlywed Game's own prime-time edition in January 1967.
- October 15 – A TV version of the musical Brigadoon is telecast on ABC as a special, using an updated script and story line and re-introducing some of the songs cut from the 1954 movie. The production stars Robert Goulet, Peter Falk and Sally Ann Howes, also featuring Edward Villella and Marlyn Mason. The special airs only one other time, in 1967, before disappearing completely.
- October 17 – All of NBC's news programming begins airing in full-color.
- October 27 – It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown airs for the first time on CBS.
- October 29 – Actor William Hartnell makes his last regular appearance as the First Doctor in the concluding moments of Episode 4 of the Doctor Who serial The Tenth Planet. Actor Patrick Troughton briefly appears as the Second Doctor at the conclusion of the serial.
- November 5 – Actor Patrick Troughton appears in his first full Doctor Who serial The Power of the Daleks as the Second Doctor.
- November 16 – Cathy Come Home, one of the best-known plays ever to be televised in the UK, is presented in BBC1's The Wednesday Play anthology strand.
- November 19 – First live 2-way satellite telecasts between Hawaii (KHVH-TV, now KITV) and the Mainland (ABC), via the Lani Bird satellite.
- December 18 – CBS airs the television adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas for the first time.
- December 21 – A Christmas Memory, a recounting of Truman Capote's childhood experiences as captured in his 1956 memoir, is adapted for television on ABC Stage 67. Frank Perry directs, Capote himself narrates, and Geraldine Page (in an Emmy-winning performance) stars.
- December 24 – WPIX in New York City premieres the Yule Log Christmas special which ran every year from 1966 to 1989, but returned in 2001.
- Also in 1966
- The 1951–53 CBS sitcom Amos & Andy is pulled from syndication broadcast due to complaints from civil rights organizations.
- Macdonald Carey starts reciting the epigram "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives" at the beginning of his soap opera, Days of Our Lives, a tradition that continues today, over a decade after his death.
Programs/Programmes
Debuts
Ending this year
Births
Deaths
