1988 in television

See also:

Events

• February 26 - Tom Hardy marries Simone Ravelle on General Hospital. It is a milestone for the genre as it is the first interracial wedding between two characters on American daytime television.
• April 28 - ITV in the UK broadcasts Death on the Rock, a hugely controversial episode of Thames Television's This Week current affairs strand, investigating Operation Flavius, which resulted in the SAS killing three members of the IRA in Gibraltar.
• May 13 - J.R. Ewing pushes Nicholas Pierce over the railing of his high-rise office building, and Sue Ellen is so enraged that she fires three shots at him, on the season finale of Dallas.
• July 19 - The Bill broadcasts the first episode of its fourth season and switches to a year-round serial format.
• September 1 - Children's cable network YTV launches in Canada.
• October 4 - Following in Cher's footsteps, actress Shirley MacLaine calls David Letterman an "asshole", on the air during a taping of Late Night.
• October 27 - The last of Harding Lemay's "comeback" episodes air on Another World. In the final minutes of the episode, Australian actress Carmen Duncan took over the role of the legendary bitch Iris Cory Wheeler, after the role had been vacated for many years by Beverlee McKinsey.
• November 3 - Talk show host Geraldo Rivera's nose is broken during a taping of his show, when a fight erupts on the set between guests. The theme of the episode was "Young Hate Mongers" and the fight originated between white supremacist Tom Metzger and civil rights activist Roy Innis.
• The song "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" experiences a surge in popularity sparked by television commercials featuring claymation raisin figures. The California Raisins version of the song peaks at No. 84 on Billboard's Hot 100.
• Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart is the focus of a sex scandal, and later admits to being with prostitutes and steps down from his television ministry.
• The Young and the Restless tops the daytime ratings (deposing longtime winner General Hospital), starting an unbeaten streak of #1 victories that still continue to this day.
• Ana Alicia's character, Melissa Agretti, dies in a house fire on Falcon Crest.