Carlton Television takes over the weekday ITV franchise based in London at midnight, replacing Thames Television after 24 years on the air. Meridian Broadcasting takes over the South of England franchise from Television South, Westcountry Television takes over the South West England franchise from Television South West, Good Morning Television takes over the national breakfast television franchise from TV-am and Teletext Ltd takes over the teletext franchises from ORACLE.
The ITC removes the limit on the value of prizes which can be given away on ITV game shows in the United Kingdom (set at £6,000 per episode since 1981), paving the way for the big money game shows of the late 1990s and 2000s.
Channel 4 becomes an independent statutory corporation. Under the terms of the Broadcasting Act 1990 the channel is now also allowed to sell its own airtime. Under the Act, ITV have agreed to fund Channel 4 if it falls below 14% of total TV advertising revenue. The channel also makes a payment of £38 million to ITV under terms of its funding formula.[1]
The London News Network, a joint venture between London's two franchise holders, Carlton and LWT, begins providing seven-day news service for ITV viewers in London.
Scottish Television launches new idents and presentation.[2]
3 January –
The Central Television produced preschool series Tots TV begins on ITV and starts airing in the United States the next day. Its sponsor was Lego Duplo.
The final edition of LWT News is presented by Anna Maria Ashe.
Debut of Breakfast with Frost, a Sunday morning current affairs programme on BBC1, presented by David Frost.[3]
Scottish Television launches a 30-minute lunchtime edition of Scotland Today.
Launch of the ITV regional news programme London Tonight, which airs seven days a week on both Carlton and London Weekend Television.
Ulster Television's news service is renamed UTV Live. The programme broadcasts for 60 minutes, instead of 30.
The BBC launches Business Breakfast as a 60-minute stand-alone programme. It had previously been part of Breakfast News. Consequently, the BBC's weekday breakfast programmes start half an hour earlier, at 6.00am. BBC1 begins broadcasting on weekdays also at 6.00am. A start of day Ceefax broadcast is retained although it now runs for 15 minutes rather than 30, beginning at 5.45am.
6 January –
The Times reports that IFE have revised and increased their offer to purchase former ITV franchise holder TVS.[4][5]
Animated series The Animals of Farthing Wood which was based on the books by Colin Dann is broadcast on BBC1.[6]
Debut of Clive James' acclaimed series Fame in the 20th Century, an eight-part BBC1 series in which James examines the nature of 20th century fame using archive footage and commentary.[7] The series concludes on 24 February.[8]
8 January –
ITV screens the present series of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends once more. However, the first few episodes will be trimmed to fit the timeslot.
ITV debuts its children's comedy programme ZZZap! starring the show you how its done gloves known as the Handymen, Richard Waites as the trouble causing Cuthbert Lilly and the sneaky villain Tricky Dicky and Neil Buchanan as the smartest artist Smart Arty.
The Friday handover hours for Carlton and LWT were changed to an regular 5.40pm slot.
ITV introduces a third weekly episode of The Bill on Friday evenings.
20 January – BBC2 airs live coverage of the inauguration of Bill Clinton as the 42nd President of the United States.[9]
23 January – The Times reports that an offer by IFE to buy TVS for £56.5 million has been accepted by TVS.[10]
24 January — Lifestyle and Lifestyle Satellite Jukebox closes.
February[]
1 February –
IFE completes its deal to buy TVS.
British Sky Broadcasting introduces a new system of film ratings often used for various times, replacing the British Board of Film Classification certificates.
6 February – The Casualty episode "Family Matters" sees an early appearance by the actress Kate Winslet.[11]
7 February – Having completed its initial run of all 692 episodes of Prisoner: Cell Block H in December 1991, Central Television begins re-running the series from the first episode. It is shown weekly, late on Sunday evenings until the end of 1994.
12–14 February – Channel 4 airs Love Weekend, a series of programmes with sexually explicit content coinciding with Valentine's Day weekend. The weekend includes the British television debut of Last Tango in Paris, which is aired uncut on 14 February.[12] The makers of Tango pay £20,000 for a 30-second commercial advertising the soft drink in the film's first ad break.[13]
14–16 February – Sky One debuts Diana: Her True Story, a dramatisation of Andrew Morton's biography of Diana, Princess of Wales. The film features Serena Scott Thomas as the Princess.[14]
15 February – BBC2 airs Oprah Winfrey's interview with singer Michael Jackson.[14][15]
16 February – The final-ever episode of Count Duckula broadcasts on ITV for the last time.
24 February – John Nettles makes a cameo appearance as Jim Bergerac in an episode of the BBC1 comedy The Detectives set in Jersey.[16]
27 February – "Boiling Point", an episode of the BBC medical drama series Casualty,[17] is met with great controversy and outrage after it depicts rioting youths setting fire to a hospital's accident and emergency department. The Corporation receives over 700 complaints about the violent nature of the episode, despite showing it after the 9.00pm watershed and warning viewers accordingly. However, the episode achieves viewing figures of 17.02 million – the highest for the show at the time.
28 February – BBC1 screens the first in a twelve-part adaptation of Peter Mayle's memoir A Year in Provence.[18] The series, starring John Thaw and Lindsay Duncan, concludes on 16 May.[19] Unlike the book, the miniseries is not well received by critics, and in 2006 it is placed at number ten on a Radio Times list of the worst television programmes ever made[20][21] The writer John Naughton describes it as a "smugathon ... which achieved the near impossible – creating a John Thaw vehicle nobody liked".[21]
March[]
1 March –
Screensport and Eurosport were merged. Consequently, Screensport closes. They merge to try to turn two loss making channels into a single profitable channel.[22]
6 March – An IRA bomb scare at BBC Television Centre means that the live Saturday night programme Noel's House Party cannot be shown. Instead, after a repeat of the previous year's Noel's Christmas Presents, host Noel Edmonds is forced to introduce a Tom and Jerry cartoon in its place, The Zoot Cat.
12 March – BBC1 airs Total Relief, the 1993 Comic Relief telethon.[23]
23–24 March – Sky One transmits Episodes 170 and 171 of Australian soap E Street, which features a hard-hitting storyline involving extreme character Sonny Bennett (), who kills three characters in a car bomb explosion. Because the series is aired in an early evening timeslot these episodes are preceded by a warning to viewers that they contain scenes that some may find upsetting. The 12.30pm repeat the following day (24 and 25 March) is dropped entirely and replaced by episodes of The Simpsons.
26 March – ITV airs "The Final Straw", an episode of The Bill in which Detective Constable Viv Martella (played by Nula Conwell) is killed off when she is shot by a gunman after approaching his car.
27 March – BBC1 airs the British television premiere of Eddie Murphy's gangster comedy Harlem Nights.
28 March – The Bluebells' 1984 recording of "Young at Heart" reaches number one in the UK Singles Chart following a re-release after being featured in a Volkswagen Golf commercial. It tops the charts for four weeks.
29 March – Central TV becomes the first ITV region to begin screening the New Zealand medical soap opera Shortland Street.
3 April – The 1993 Grand National, shown live on BBC1, is declared void after 30 of the 39 runners begin the race, and carry on despite there having been a false start.
4 April – Children's BBC begin to repeat the children's drama series Grange Hill from its first series in 1978, on Sunday mornings on BBC2, as part of the show's 15th anniversary celebrations. These repeats end in 1999 with series 16, Prior to the repeats, Rugrats begins showing on the same date.[24][25]
5 April – The Children's Channel rebrands with a new series of idents depicting the live-action shots that shows the colours of blue, red and yellow, and updates its new logo like the original one.
6 April – BBC1 airs This Is Michael Bolton, a recording of Michael Bolton in concert.[26]
11 April – Sky One airs the first-ever clip show episode in the fourth season of The Simpsons, and featured clips of various episodes from the first three seasons.
13 April – A fresh look is introduced across all the BBC's television news bulletins, with a studio that is almost entirely computer-generated and features a glass model of the Corporation's coat of arms.
17 April –
After six years, six series and 179 editions, BBC1 broadcasts the final edition of its Saturday morning magazine programme, Going Live!.[27]
Arena presents a new four-part series "Tales of Rock 'N' Roll" on BBC2 looking at the story of four rock songs of how they came about and the history behind them and who and what they involved. Starting with Peggy Sue who was tracked down in Sacramento, California to be found running her own drain-clearing company Rapid Rooter and then to be taken back to Lubbock, Texas to recall how she knew Buddy Holly and how her marriage to drummer Jerry Allison turned out. Heartbreak Hotel where the song came to be written after the two songwriters discovered an article about a suicide in a hotel in Miami after reading about it in the Miami Herald. Walk on the Wild Side looks at all the characters that were involved in the song and how Lou Reed used to spend time at Andy Warhol's studio where they all did (Holly Woodlawn & Joe Dallesandro were the only ones still around to tell the tale) and Highway 61 Revisited which looked at Bob Dylan's roots and everything that was connected with U.S. Route 61. The series ran for four weeks on Saturday nights on 17 April, 24 April, 1 May, and 8 May.
23 April –
Pearson Television launches a friendly takeover bid for Thames Television, valuing the company at £99 million.[28]
Episode 1681 of Neighbours which is the first episode that does not to feature the 1980s style titles and theme music is shown in the United Kingdom, having previously made its debut in Australia on 18 May 1992.
30 April – Sky One airs an unseen third season's episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation for the first time, it was never shown on BBC2 until 29 September 2007 due to references to the reunification of Ireland being achieved through terrorism in Northern Ireland between the Provisional Irish Republican Army and the Troubles.
May[]
1 May – ITV airs the network television premiere of Christopher Cain's 1988 Brat Pack western film Young Guns, starring Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Charlie Sheen and Terence Stamp.
2–3 May – Debut of the two-part adaptation of Jilly Cooper's 1985 blockbuster novel Riders on ITV, starring Marcus Gilbert, Michael Praed, Arabella Tjye, Anthony Calf, Sienna Guillory, Annabel Giles, Gabrielle Beaumont and Stephanie Beacham. It was produced by Anglia Films after weeks of being trailed as "a sex sizzler".[29]
10 May –
Debut of Peak Practice on ITV, was one of their most successful medical drama series at the time. It originally starred Kevin Whately as Dr Jack Kerruish, Amanda Burton as Dr Beth Glover and Simon Shepherd as Dr Will Preston, though the roster of doctors would change many times over the course of the series.
Channel 4 airs Beyond Citizen Kane, a documentary film directed by Simon Hartog, produced by John Ellis and narrated by Chris Kelly. It details the dominant position of the Globo media group by founder Roberto Marinho, discusses the group's influence, power and political connections with the support of military dictatorship in Brazil.
13 May – Peter Dean makes his final appearance as EastEnders market trader Pete Beale. The character goes on the run with an old flame who he had reconnected with, only to discover she was married to a local gangster. Pete is killed off-screen on 16 December after the couple are killed in a car crash.
15 May – Ireland's Niamh Kavanagh wins the 1993 Eurovision Song Contest with "In Your Eyes", beating the United Kingdom's Sonia (who sung "Better the Devil You Know") by 23 points.
16 May – Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone appear as guests on the ITV chat show Aspel & Company.[30] The edition is later censured by the Independent Television Commission because the actors were promoting their joint business venture Planet Hollywood.[31]
19 May – After ten years and ten series in its original run, the final edition of Blockbusters is showing for the last time on ITV. But it continued for one more series on the satellite channel Sky One a year later, and the five ITV regions showed this series until 1995.
22 May – Stars in Their Eyes returns with a new presenter. Matthew Kelly takes on the role from Leslie Crowther, who is still recovering from head injuries received in a car crash the previous year.
27 May – Final showing of the five-part BBC SchoolsFrench language adventure series La Marée et ses Secrets (The Tide and its Secrets), which first aired in 1984.[32][33]
June[]
1 June – S4C introduced a new series of idents, which depicted inanimate objects as having characteristics of dragons as a reference to the red dragon on the flag of Wales.
4 June –
When Roy Hattersley fails to appear for that day's edition of Have I Got News for You — the third time he has cancelled at the last minute — he is replaced with a tub of lard (credited as "The Rt. Hon. Tub of Lard MP"), as it is "imbued with much the same qualities and liable to give a similar performance".[34]
At 6.00pm, UTV unveils a new logo. A new jingle is also introduced with a distinct Celtic sound.[35]
6 June – The Animals of Farthing Wood makes its television debut in the Republic of Ireland on RTÉ. It still airs on television in this country to this very day.
9 June – ITV broadcasts the network television premiere of Steel Magnolias, starring Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah, Julia Roberts and Olympia Dukakis.
11 June – Fawlty Towers begins its first transmission on Namibian television channel NBC in Namibia.
11–13 June – Channel 4 airs the final three episodes of Cheers over three consecutive nights, finishing with the 80-minute finale. However, due to the series' popularity repeats of the series begin from the following weekend.[36]
28 June – Channel 4 airs the last programmes produced for the ITV Schools strand. However, the channel continues to produce its own schools programming for several years afterwards.
July[]
1 July – The two production companies, Tiger Television and Aspect Film and Television, merge to form Tiger Aspect Productions.
BBC1 airs the final episode of Eldorado.[37] The soap was axed due to poor ratings.
ITV finishes repeating the present series of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. One episode, "Thomas and Percy's Christmas Adventure", has been excluded from this year's series of repeats.
22 July – Three former cable-only channels – Discovery, The Learning Channel and Bravo – started broadcasting on the Astra satellite, ahead before the launch of the Sky Multichannels package.
22–23 July – BBC1 airs the US crime drama Stay the Night, starring Barbara Hershey.[38][39]
23 July – Prime Minister John Major gives an interview to ITN journalist Michael Brunson after his government wins a vote of confidence in the House of Commons earlier in the day. During an unguarded moment following the interview, and while still being recorded, Major refers to some of his cabinet colleagues as "Bastards".[40] The incident, which becomes known in the media as "Bastardgate", prompts the tabloid newspapers Daily Mirror and The Sun to set up telephone lines with recordings of the conversation that readers are invited to call. Both newspapers are warned to discontinue the lines by the regulatory body, the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services because it feels that broadcasting the off-air conversation is a breach of privacy.[41]
24 July – The fourth series of ITV's Stars in Their Eyes concludes with the programme's first live Grand Final, enabling viewers to vote for their favourite act. The series is won by Jacquii Cann, performing as Alison Moyet.
July – The ITC publishes the findings of a technical review of the future viability of launching a fifth television channel. By October, more than 70 parties have responded to its publication, including some expressing interest in running Channel 5 should the licence be readvertised.[42]
August[]
6 August – BBC1 airs Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid, a film starring Val Kilmer.[43]
18 August – ITV airs 15: The Life and Death of Philip Knight, Peter Kosminsky's drama-documentary film about a teenage man, who took his own life in his cell at Swansea adult prison on 13 July 1990.
20 August – BBC1 airs the 1990 action comedy Heart Condition, starring Bob Hoskins and Denzel Washington.[44]
27 August – BBC1 airs a special live edition of Challenge Anneka in which Anneka Rice returns to some of the projects the show worked on to check on their progress.[45]
29 August – BBC1 airs Steven Spielberg's 1989 bittersweet romantic fantasy Always, starring Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter and John Goodman.[46]
30 August – BBC1 airs the 1990 live-action adventure Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a film based on the popular television series known in the United Kingdom as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.[47]
September[]
1 September –
Sky Multichannels launches in the United Kingdom. Consequently, many satellite free-to-air channels become pay channels.
Three new channels launch – The Family Channel, Nickelodeon UK, and UK Living – and all become part of the Sky Multichannels package.
The IFE launches The Family Channel is based at The Maidstone Studios and uses some elements of the TVS programme archive. Flextech are a partner in the venture, taking a 39% stake in the business.[48] It is an evenings-only service and shares space with The Children's Channel which now ends its day two hours earlier at 5.00pm.
6 September – UK Gold introduces a new ident with the form-up of the first logo against a silky blue background, replacing the 'Goldie' idents.
11 September – Sky One moves E Street from its weekday early evening slot to a weekend daytime slot, where it is shown in hour-long episodes on Saturdays from 6.00pm to 7.00pm and Sundays from 1.00pm to 2.00pm. The weekday 6.30pm slot is used to air episodes of Paradise Beach, but E Street is restored to the weekday slot in January 1994 after the move proves to be unpopular.
12 September –
BBC1 airs A Foreign Field as part of the Screen One strand starring Alec Guinness, Lauren Bacall, Leo McKern and Jeanne Moreau. It was directed by Charles Sturridge and featured an ensemble cast of American, Australian, British and French within its title evokes the Rupert Brooke's 1915 poem The Soldier.
ITV debuts the biographical drama miniseries Sinatra, focusing about the life of legendary singer and actor which stars Philip Casnoff, Olympia Dukakis, Joe Santos, Gina Gershon and Rod Steiger. The concluding part is aired on 13 September.
17 September – Cartoon Network and classic movie channel TNT launch in the United Kingdom. They share the same transponder with Cartoon Network broadcasting during the day and TNT transmitting during the evening and overnight. The channels are free-to-air on satellite and are not part of the Sky Multichannels package.
19 September –
ITV airs the network television premiere of Peter Weir's 1989 teen drama film Dead Poets Society, starring Robin Williams.
Channel 4 airs Blue, a drama film directed by Derek Jarman, who was partially blind and only able to see in shades of blue. BBC Radio 3 also broadcasts the film simultaneously so that viewers could hear the soundtrack in stereo.
20 September – Schools programmes continue to be shown on Channel 4 under the branding of Channel 4 Schools.
21 September – BBC1 airs "A Murderer's Game", an edition of the Crimewatch File series looking at the 1992 hunt for the kidnapper of Birmingham estate agent Stephanie Slater.[49]
22 September – BBC1 airs "Hostage", an edition of the Inside Story strand in which Terry Waite speaks about his years of captivity in Beirut.[50]
24 September – A five-minute animated cartoon series for preschoolers Philbert Frog screens on BBC1.
September – Scottish Television reschedules Emmerdale from 7.00pm to 5.10pm, and uses the slot to broadcast daily regional programmes, including Take the High Road. This arrangement continues until early 1998 when Emmerdale is moved back to the original slot.
October[]
1 October – QVC UK launches in the United Kingdom, becoming the UK's first home shopping channel. The channel had originally launched in the United States in 1986.
2 October –
The new Saturday morning magazine programme Live & Kicking debuts on BBC1, presented by Andi Peters, Emma Forbes, and John Barrowman.[51]
Super Channel is renamed as NBC Super Channel following it being taken over by the American company General Electric, then-parent of the NBC television network.[52]
19 October – Last on-screen appearance of Roly, the EastEnders dog and Queen Vic resident who has been part of the soap since the first episode. Roly is killed off, the episode featuring his demise attracting an audience of 14.8 million viewers. The dog who played Roly died during a heatwave on 2 August 1995.
20 October –
Debut of Thatcher: The Downing Street Years, a four-part BBC1 series looking at the premiership of Margaret Thatcher.[53]
Kirsty Wark debuts as anchor on BBC2's Newsnight.
The ITC issues Channel 4 with a formal warning for an episode of the soap Brookside aired on 7 and 8 May, which depicted a wife stabbing her abusive husband to death.[54]
21 October – Channel 4 is granted permission by the High Court to show excerpts from Stanley Kubrick's controversial 1971 film A Clockwork Orange as part of its Without Walls series. The film, Forbidden Fruit, is shown on 26 October. Time Warner had sought to prevent Channel 4 from showing scenes from the film, which has been banned in the United Kingdom since 1973 after Kubrick withdrew it amid concerns it was encouraging violence and the ban lifted in 2000.[55]
November[]
2 November – Prime MinisterJohn Major announces a review of the 1988 broadcasting ban, telling the House of Commons that broadcasters are stretching it "to the limit and perhaps beyond".[56]
7 November – American animated television series based on the popular Sega video games Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog begins on Channel 4 two months after its US television debut.
8 November – The first television advert for an undertaker's is broadcast during an early evening episode of Scottish soap opera Take the High Road on ITV.
9 November –
The first edition of It'll Never Work?, a children's television programme showcasing new inventions and developments in scientific technology, debuts on BBC1.[57]
ITV airs the network television premiere of Paul Verhoeven's 1990 science-fiction action thriller film Total Recall, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sharon Stone, Rachel Ticotin, Michael Ironside and Ronny Cox.
16 November – Patsy Palmer makes her EastEnders debut as long-running character Bianca Jackson.
18 November –
Several schoolchildren are killed in a minibus crash on the M40. The incident is carried as the lead story on ITV's Early Evening News and News at Ten, while the BBC's flagship Nine O'Clock News carries it as the third item, behind the State Opening of Parliament and a piece about the Troubles. The BBC's decision to put the item third attracts strong criticism from other journalists, who question the reasoning behind it, and accuse the BBC of being out of touch.[58]
BBC1 debuts Goodnight Sweetheart, a time-travelling comedy series starring Nicholas Lyndhurst, Michelle Holmes, Dervla Kirwan and Victor McGuire.[59]
19 November – Channel 4 airs the first "Late Licence" which sees it on air on Friday and Saturday nights until around 5.00am. The first "Late Licence" is presented by Smashie and Nicey with the strand showing repeats of the channel's content, such as editions of The Word.[36]
20 November – Leslie Crowther makes his first television appearance since his accident on The Royal Variety Performance, appearing alongside Cilla Black.
22 November – On the 30th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Channel 4 airs the documentary As It Happened: The Killing of Kennedy which gives a minute-by-minute account of the events of 22 November 1963, with contributions from scores of eyewitnesses.[60]
23 November – 30th anniversary of the first broadcast of Doctor Who in the United Kingdom.
26–27 November – BBC1 airs the two-part Doctor Who special Dimensions in Time, a crossover with EastEnders. The episode is part of the 1993 Children in Need telethon, and the first Doctor Who episode to be televised since the series ended in December 1989.[61][62]
29 November –
The Krypton Factor broadcasts on ITV for the final time after 16 years, it will returned in 1995 with co-host Penny Smith.
ITV debuts the three-part dramatisation of Carol Clewlow's 1989 romantic novel , starring Amanda Donohoe, Theresa Russell, Adrian Dunbar and Sean Bean. The serial continues on 13 December.
December[]
5 December – "Mr Blobby", a novelty song inspired by the Noel's House Partycharacter of the same name tops the UK Singles Chart. After being replaced a week later by Take That's "Babe", the song returns to the top to become the 1993 Christmas number one.[63][64]
6 December – ITV's North West England franchise holder Granada Television launches a hostile takeover for London Weekend Television, worth £600 million. The takeover bid comes about because of the relaxation of the rules governing the network. LWT tries to outstep the takeover bid by initiating talks with Yorkshire Television and Scottish Television.[65]
9 December – Peter Sissons hosts his last edition of Question Time,[66] having chaired the political debate programme since 1989.
13 December – The Times reports that a conflict of words has broken out between London Weekend Television and Granada over LWT's talks with Yorkshire Television. Granada claims the YTV-LWT deal is "something cobbled together by desperate men". Gerry Robinson, the Chairman of Granada plc, is dismissive of the deal, especially since Yorkshire has made £10 million loss and is already paying much of its revenue to the government. Reports also suggest if LWT bid for Yorkshire Television it would also form an alliance with Anglia who would takeover Tyne Tees Television.[67]
18 December – BBC2 broadcasts the Arena special "Radio Night", an ambitious simulcast with BBC Radio 4.[68]
21 December – The Marcopolo 1 satellite is sold to Sweden's Nordic Satellite AB and renamed Sirius 1.
22 December – Plato's Stepchildren, an episode of the US science-fiction series Star Trek is shown on BBC2 for the first time having not been seen on British television since the series' original run on BBC1.[69][70]
24 December – Christmas Eve highlights on BBC1 include the premiere of the 1990 espionage thriller The Hunt for Red October, starring Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin.[71]
25 December –
Christmas Day highlights on BBC1 include the network television premieres of Back to the Future: Part III and Ghost.[72]
Channel 4 airs its first "Alternative Christmas message". The broadcast features a contemporary, often controversial celebrity, delivering a message in the manner of The Queen. The first alternative message is delivered by Quentin Crisp.
26 December –
Christmas Sunday highlights on BBC1 include the films Superman III and The Outlaw Josey Wales.[73]
The Wrong Trousers, the second short film starring Wallace and Gromit, premieres on BBC2.[74]
27 December – Channel 4 broadcasts , a short animated television film based on a book by children's author and illustrator Babette Cole. The film features the voices of well known celebrities such as Dexter Fletcher, Jonathan Ross, Jim Broadbent, Jennifer Saunders and Craig Charles, as well as two original songs performed by singer Miriam Stockley and comedian Lenny Henry.
30 December –
The Times reports that Granada has increased its takeover bid for LWT to £658 million.[75]
Episodes of Emmerdale featuring the controversial plane crash storyline begin airing on ITV. The storyline was developed to win higher ratings for the series, which was threatened with cancellation due to low viewing figures. However, although it succeeded in turning around the fortunes of the series, ITV received many complaints about the timing of the story which came shortly after the fifth anniversary of the Lockerbie Disaster.
31 December –
The first edition of the annual Scottish football-themed comedy sketch show Only an Excuse? for BBC Scotland on 1, which is aired each Hogmanay.
BBC2 airs the first Hootenanny, an annual New Year's Eve music show hosted by Jools Holland. The show includes performances from Sting, the Gipsy Kings and Sly and Robbie.[76]
^Borrill, Rachel; Foley, Michael (3 November 1993). "Major seeks review of ban on NI terror group interviews". The Irish Times. The Irish Times Trust. p. 6.
^"It'll Never Work". 4 November 1993. p. 89. Retrieved 19 January 2019 – via BBC Genome.