January 24 - The O. J. Simpson trial begins live broadcasts on American daytime television; as a result, many of the network soap operas are partially pre-empted, more or less, for nine months.
January - The UPN and WB television networks are launched in the United States.
May - The American Fox Network broadcasts a TV movie based upon the British TV series Doctor Who in hopes to sparking interest in a revival of the series. Although the film is highly rated in the UK, it fails to achieve high enough ratings for Fox to commission a 27th season of the long-running program that last aired on the BBC in 1989. The series eventually returns to weekly broadcasts in 2005.
Canada's Sesame Street switches to showing exclusively Canadian content, renaming itself Sesame Park, as it no longer uses any American made segments from Sesame Street (1995-2002).