This is a list of British television related events from 1998.
Events January 1 January – The network television premiere on BBC One of Robert Zemekis's 1994 blockbuster film Forrest Gump, starring Tom Hanks. 3 January The BBC pulls an edition of Noel's House Party at the last minute following a disagreement between Noel Edmonds and the BBC over the quality of the programme and a reduction of its budget. A compilation show from the previous series is repeated in its place. The US supernatural series Buffy the Vampire Slayer makes its UK debut on Sky One; it stars Sarah Michelle Gellar as the titular character. 6 January – The BBC and ITV agree their scheduling arrangements for the 1998 World Cup, which will see both England and Scotland's opening matches airing on BBC One, while each nation's second group match will air on ITV. 7 January – The BBC confirms that Helen Rollason will return to television to present weekend sports bulletins for BBC One and BBC Two following treatment for colon cancer. 8 January ITV airs the docudrama Miracle at Sea: The Rescue of Tony Bullimore which reconstructs the events of yachtsman Tony Bullimore's dramatic rescue after his boat capsized during the 1996 Vendée Globe yacht race. The US sitcom Veronica's Closet makes its UK debut on Sky One; it stars Kirstie Alley. 9 January Michael Parkinson returns to television with a new series of Parkinson on BBC One. Guests on the first edition are Sir Anthony Hopkins, Barry Manilow and Paul Merton. Channel 5 signs a deal with Buena Vista Entertainment to air some of its films. This will include the network television premiere of The Rock, starring Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery. 12 January Location filming begins for a one-off episode of the Australian soap Home and Away set in Ironbridge, Shropshire. This is the first time the soap has filmed an episode overseas. The storyline, which will air later in the year, sees Irene Roberts (Lynne McGranger) arrive in the UK to help Selina Roberts (Tempany Deckert), who is recovering from a bout of malaria. Selina is also reunited with her on screen fiancé, Steven Matheson (Adam Willits). The 1996 UTV logos are supplemented with a set of idents featuring people playing the UTV jingle on various musical instruments. Debut on BBC Two of the comedy sketch show Goodness Gracious Me, starring Sanjeev Bhaskar, Meera Syal, Kulvinder Ghir and Nina Wadia. 13 January – Debut of the docusoap The Cruise on BBC One. 14 January Channel 4 airs the 2000th episode of its long-running soap Brookside. Debut of ITV Nightscreen, which is shown during the early hours of the morning. 17 January – Media sources report the arrival of a new EastEnders family, the Di Marcos, who will make their first appearance later in the month and set up an Italian restaurant in Albert Square. The majority of the family are written out of the soap two years later. 21 January – The former Conservative MP Rupert Allason loses a libel action against BBC Worldwide and Hat Trick Productions over comments made in a 1996 book based on the satirical series Have I Got News for You. A paragraph in Have I Got 1997 for You had noted "...given Mr Allason's fondness for pursuing libel actions, there are also excellent legal reasons for not referring to him as a conniving little shit". 24 January – ITV airs the first episode of Ice Warriors, a spin-off from Gladiators, but the series is not a success and is axed after nine episodes with the last one airing on 21 March. 25–26 January – Channel 4's coverage of American football comes to an end with its broadcast of the 1998 Super Bowl. 26 January – Hayley Patterson, British soap's first transgender character, is first seen in Coronation Street. Hayley, played by Julie Hesmondhalgh, is a regular in the series for sixteen years and helps to change public attitudes towards transgender issues. The character is killed off in a dramatic and emotional right to die storyline in January 2014 after Hesmondhalgh decides to leave the show. 30 January – The Weather Channel closes in the UK after fewer than 18 months on the air, owing to low viewership. Rival weather station The Weather Network also closes its UK operation around the same time.
February 4 February – Debut of The Pepsi Chart Show on Channel 5. Initially presented by Rhona Mitra and Eddy Temple-Morris, the show is intended as a stablemate to the Pepsi Chart that airs across commercial radio. It becomes one of the channel's most watched programmes, but has difficulty attracting some of the bigger acts of the day. 7–22 February – The BBC provides coverage of the 1998 Winter Olympic Games from Japan. Due to the time difference, live coverage is limited with little action shown, especially during the second week of the Games. 8 February – Debut on ITV of My Kind of Music, hosted by Michael Barrymore. 15 February – The final Screen One drama is broadcast on BBC One with Our Boy, starring Pauline Quirke and Ray Winstone. 16 February Teletubbies begins airing in Australia on ABC. The game show Wipeout is relaunched as a daytime series on BBC One with Bob Monkhouse succeeding Paul Daniels as host. 17 February – The Central discussion series Central Weekend is criticised by the Independent Television Commission after an elderly couple complained about an item on the show's 9 January edition that included a discussion about the size of male genitalia. 20 February – Debut on BBC Two of Robot Wars, presented by Jeremy Clarkson and later Craig Charles. 27 February – Castle Transmission International is confirmed as the supplier of the BBC's Digital Terrestrial Television Service and says it will invest £100 million in broadcast capacity. February – CNBC Europe merges with European Business News, upon which the channel is officially known as "CNBC Europe – A Service of NBC and Dow Jones". February – Middlesbrough Football Club launches Boro TV, and becomes the first football club in the world to launch their own dedicated TV channel.
March 1 March – Positions for BBC Governors are advertised for the first time in the Sunday newspapers. 2 March – Channel 5 begins a rerun of the 1980s' Australian soap Sons and Daughters. This is the series first networked broadcast as its previous run on ITV had varied from region to region. 4 March – Kate Winslet, star of Titanic, appears as a guest on Celebrity Ready Steady Cook with former Casualty actor Gray O'Brien. 6 March Debut on ITV of Airline, a brand new six-part fly-on-the-wall documentary series, produced by London Weekend Television narrated by Charlie Higson, that highlights the daily happenings of the passengers, ground workers and flight crew of Britannia Airways. From the second series, the show switches its attention to EasyJet. Central Weekend is briefly taken off the air when a member of the audience becomes aggressive during a discussion about women's football. 9 March – The name Tyne Tees Television is brought back to ITV viewers in the North East of England, having been rebranded as Channel 3 North East two years earlier. 14 March – Debut of the Saturday morning children's series Diggit on ITV. 15 March – ITV airs a special one-off edition of Sunday Night at the London Palladium to celebrate Bruce Forsyth's 70th birthday. It includes appearances by Diana Ross and Joe Longthorne. 16 March – Teletubbies goes on the air in New Zealand on TV3. 19 March – The BBC signs a deal with Discovery Communications that will allow the two to collaborate on the production of nature programming. 20 March – The 9:25am slot on ITV that has typically been used to broadcast gameshows since 1987 is used for that genre for the final time, with the talk show Vanessa set to take over the slot from the following week. On the same morning, the final edition of The Time, The Place is aired on ITV after just over a decade. 21 March – BBC Two airs Richard Eyre's film version of his Royal National Theatre production of King Lear, starring Ian Holm in the eponymous role, as well as Barbara Flynn, Amanda Redman and Victoria Hamilton as Lear's daughters. 28 March The US adult animated series South Park makes its UK debut on Sky One. Debut on BBC One of the National Lottery game show Big Ticket, presented by Anthea Turner and Patrick Kielty, which is the first British game show to offer a six figure cash prize with a jackpot of £100,000. Despite much publicity for the series, it is not a success and its final episode airs on 11 July. 29 March BBC America launches in the US. An episode of Coronation Street, in which the character Deirdre Rachid is jailed for mortgage and credit card fraud, is watched by 16.5 million viewers, giving the soap its highest Sunday viewing figures since the weekend episode was added in 1996. The crimes having been committed by her lover, Jon Lindsay, Deirdre's wrongful conviction sparks a public outcry. Her case is championed by national newspapers and even Prime Minister Tony Blair offers to refer the conviction to Home Secretary Jack Straw. 31 March – CMT Europe ceases broadcasting.
April 1 April – Episode 2965 of Neighbours airs on BBC One; it sees Anne Haddy make her final appearance as matriarch Helen Daniels, the character having been killed off. The episode aired in Australia on 17 October 1997. Haddy, the soap's longest serving cast member at the time of her departure, dies herself in June 1999. 3 April – The Children's Channel ceases broadcasting in the UK after 14 years. 4 April – After just nine shows, Ice Warriors is axed by ITV owing to poor ratings and the show itself is not recommissioned for a second series. 6 April Cable and Wireless viewers see the Nordic version of The Children's Channel due to a pre-agreed contract signed some years before to air The Children's Channel in Scandinavia. Flextech creates an advertisement-free version known as TCC Nordic to fulfil this requirement. Teletubbies starts airing in the US on PBS as part of the PTV Park block. 8 April – The military science-fiction series Stargate SG-1 makes its debut on Sky One, beginning with a special two-hour pilot episode. 10 April Progress in Northern Ireland after overnight talks as the final draft of a Good Friday Agreement is almost ready for signature. At about 5:30pm, BBC Two drops its scheduled programmes in the late afternoon to cover developments picking up in the middle of a joint press conference at Castle Buildings in Stormont Estate by the Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern. After 13 years with EastEnders, Gillian Taylforth makes her final regular appearance as Kathy Beale with the show airing a one-hour special to coincide with her departure. BBC One airs a two-part adaptation of the 1994 Minette Walters crime novel The Scold's Bridle, starring Miranda Richardson, Siân Phillips, Virginia McKenna and Trudie Styler. The second part is aired on 11 April. 12 April – Debut on Channel 4 of the engineering competition Scrapheap Challenge, presented by Robert Llewellyn. 13 April – Channel 4 premieres the 1994 animated film The Pagemaster starring Macaulay Culkin, Christopher Lloyd, Patrick Stewart & Whoopi Goldberg. 16 April – CITV is scheduled to air the tenth episode of ReBoots third series. However, the episode is not broadcast and Timmy Towers is shown instead. 17 April – Coronation Street character Deirdre Rachid is freed from prison after her lover Jon Lindsay is exposed as a bigamist. Four separate tabloid newspapers subsequently claim victory in securing her release, but the soap's producers say they always planned for the jail storyline to conclude after three weeks. 21 April – Magdalen College, Oxford wins the 1997–98 series of University Challenge on BBC Two, beating Birkbeck, University of London 225–195. 27 April ITV airs the final episode of the children's programme Tots TV. Kevin Lloyd, who has played Tosh Lines in The Bill since 1988, is dismissed from the role by ITV owing to his alcoholism. He dies at the age of 49 within a week.