TV on the Timeline
The shows and broadcasts that defined television. Here’s a taste of the TV pack — 138 verified moments and counting.
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That’s Whensly — a new daily puzzle of real moments on the timeline.
Play today’s puzzle — free on the App Store- 1948📺 Milton Berle hosts the debut of NBC's Texaco Star Theater, making 'Mr. Television' the medium's first superstar.
- 1951📺 CBS airs the first commercial color television broadcast in the United States, seen on only a few sets.
- 1953📺 The Academy Awards ceremony is broadcast on television for the very first time, hosted by Bob Hope.
- 1955🚌 The Honeymooners debuts as a CBS series, immortalizing Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden and his Brooklyn bus-driver world.
- 1959🌗 Rod Serling's anthology series The Twilight Zone premieres on CBS, opening a door to imagination.
- 1960🎙️ Kennedy and Nixon meet in the first televised U.S. presidential debate, making image matter as much as words.
- 1964🎸 The Beatles make their U.S. television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show, igniting Beatlemania for millions of viewers.
- 1967🏈 The first Super Bowl is broadcast live, the Green Bay Packers beating the Kansas City Chiefs on two networks.
- 1969🧸 Sesame Street premieres on educational television, reinventing how children learn from a show.
- 1970🎩 The Mary Tyler Moore Show premieres on CBS, as Mary Richards turns the world on with her smile in a Minneapolis newsroom.
- 1977📺 Mary Richards turns out the WJM newsroom lights as The Mary Tyler Moore Show signs off with a group hug.
- 1980🌺 Tom Selleck's mustachioed P.I. cruises a red Ferrari around a Hawaii estate in this breezy CBS detective hit.
- 1981🚔 NBC's gritty, ensemble-driven Hill Street Blues premieres, reinventing the cop drama and sweeping that year's Emmys.
- 1982🏥 NBC's acclaimed hospital drama St. Elsewhere admits its first patients, blending grim realism with offbeat humor.
- 1984🕶️ Pastel suits and neon Miami nights arrive as NBC's stylish cop drama Miami Vice debuts with Crockett and Tubbs.
- 1985🎶 Live Aid beams from London and Philadelphia to over a billion viewers, redefining the global benefit concert.
- 1988🛋️ Roseanne premieres on ABC, portraying the working-class Conner family with blunt, blue-collar humor led by Roseanne Barr.
- 1989🍩 The Simpsons debuts on Fox with its Christmas special, launching the longest-running American sitcom.
- 1990⚖️ Dick Wolf's procedural "Law & Order" debuts on NBC, launching a courtroom-and-cops franchise that runs for decades.
- 1991🎤 Whitney Houston delivers a soaring Star-Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl, an anthem performance for the ages.
- 1993🍺 Cheers airs its series finale, sending off the Boston bar where everybody knows your name to a huge audience.
- 1994☕ Friends premieres on NBC, introducing six twenty-somethings in New York and a sitcom phenomenon.
- 1996👽 Aliens pose as a suburban family as John Lithgow's "3rd Rock from the Sun" premieres on NBC.
- 1998📺 The Seinfeld finale airs on NBC, drawing tens of millions to the show about nothing.
- 1999🐶 Family Guy premieres on Fox after the Super Bowl, introducing the chaotic Griffin family and their talking dog Brian.
- 2000📹 CBS locks strangers in a wired house with live feeds, importing the global surveillance-reality format to America.
- 2002📺 The Wire premieres on HBO, beginning David Simon's sprawling portrait of crime and institutions in Baltimore.
- 2003🤖 Sci-Fi's gritty reboot miniseries reimagines a robotic-Cylon war as political allegory, redefining serious genre television.
- 2004🤠 HBO's profane, Shakespearean Western drops viewers into lawless Deadwood, a foul-mouthed landmark of prestige TV.
- 2005💃 ABC pairs celebrities with pro dancers for a ballroom contest, scoring the era's biggest summer reality debut.
- 2006🔪 Bravo's high-stakes culinary battle premieres, turning 'pack your knives and go' into reality-cooking gospel.
- 2007🦆 The Sopranos airs its finale on HBO, cutting to black mid-scene as mob boss Tony Soprano sits in a diner.
- 2008🎧 The Wire closes its Baltimore epic with "-30-," the city's cycle of corruption quietly beginning anew.
- 2010⚔️ A boy and his stretchy dog debut in a candy-colored land of Ooo, launching a beloved surreal cartoon.
- 2012🍸 Lena Dunham's 'Girls' debuts on HBO, capturing a generation of twentysomethings in New York City.
- 2013📎 The Office airs its finale on NBC, bidding farewell to Dunder Mifflin's Scranton crew and their mockumentary cameras.
- 2013🛸 A nihilistic genius scientist drags his anxious grandson through dimensions in a late-night sci-fi comedy debut.
- 2014💙 How I Met Your Mother ends with the divisive twist of "Last Forever," upending nine years of Ted's story.
- 2016👑 The Crown premieres on Netflix, dramatizing Queen Elizabeth II's reign and the private dramas inside the British monarchy.
- 2017🔴 Hulu's 'The Handmaid's Tale' premieres, adapting Atwood's dystopia into a chillingly timely prestige drama.
Think you can put these in order?
That’s Whensly — a new daily puzzle of real moments on the timeline.
Play today’s puzzle — free on the App Store