1987 in television

See also:

Events

• January 5 - Remington Steele returns to NBC after a six-month hiatus during which series star Pierce Brosnan won the film role of James Bond, only to lose it when NBC unexpectedly renewed the series. Steele adopts a TV-movie length format but only runs for a few installments before being cancelled for good.
• January 22 - R. Budd Dwyer shoots and kills himself at a televised press conference. The decision by some broadcasters to air the footage leads to a debate over boundaries in journalism.
• January–February - PBS broadcasts the critically-acclaimed Eyes on the Prize series.
• February 8-15 - The miniseries Amerika, showing life ten years after the United States is defeated and occupied by the USSR, is broadcast on ABC.
• February 15 - The television movie event The Facts of Life Down Under airs on NBC.
• April 19 - Matt Groening's The Simpsons debuts as a series of short animated segments on The Tracey Ullman Show.
• May - The sitcom Mr. Belvedere is canceled after three seasons. Heavy backlash causes ABC executives to rethink the decision and bring the show back. Since the fall programming schedules were already written, Mr. Belvedere does not premiere until late October.
• May 15 - Pam Ewing's car speeds out of control, crashes into a tanker, and explodes on the season finale of Dallas.
• September 7 - Sylvester McCoy becomes the seventh actor to play the Doctor in BBC One's long-running Doctor Who.
• November 11 - On As the World Turns, Lily Walsh loses her virginity to Dusty Donovan. The storyline was a subject of controversy (see Martha Byrne for more).
• November 13 - Sonny and Cher reunite for a performance on Late Night with David Letterman.
• November 22 - During a showing of the Doctor Who story Horror of Fang Rock, Chicago, Illinois PBS station WTTW-TV Channel 11 is interrupted for eighty-eight seconds by a pirate television transmitter overriding the station's transmission signal to broadcast a video of himself in a Max Headroom mask being spanked. This incident has subsequently gained a degree of cult myth about it.
• CBS becomes the last American network to cease a chime intonation at the beginning of telecasts; satellite feeds have made the tones obsolete (their job was to signal to the affiliates to start airing the network feed in sync with everyone else).
• Televangelist Jim Bakker is involved in a sex scandal, which causes him to step down as the host of The P.T.L. Club.
• In spite of initial network objections, Bob Barker, host of The Price is Right, ceases dying his hair brown and allows it to appear as its natural white on TV. He does this as a protest against the way animals are used to make the products.
• Genie Francis, of General Hospital fame, starts a new soap role as Diana Colville on Days of Our Lives, which she will play until 1989.
• 227 star Jackée Harry changes her name to "Jackée," which she goes by until 1994.