This is a list of British television related events from 1989.
Events January 1 January – The network television premiere of Amadeus on BBC1, Miloš Forman's 1984 biographical drama based on the play of the same name that is a fictionalised biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. 2 January – The network television premieres of Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird on BBC1 and the 1985 Madonna-starring film Desperately Seeking Susan on BBC2. 5 January – Debut of the sitcom Desmond's, set in a London British Guyanese barber shop, on Channel 4. 7 January – The Chart Show moves from Channel 4 to ITV. 8 January – The original airdate of the Only Fools and Horses episode "Yuppy Love" featuring the classic scene in which Del Boy falls through a bar. A 2006 poll names the scene as the most popular of the entire series while it is also named 7th Greatest Television Moment of all time in a 1999 Channel 4 poll. 9 January – Launch of Central News South, a separate local news service for the South Midlands, covering Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and parts of Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire and Wiltshire. The programme is broadcast from a new computerised news centre in Abingdon. 16 January The Late Show, the UK's first daily arts programme, makes its debut on BBC2, presented by Sarah Dunant. It airs directly after Newsnight. Debut of the critically acclaimed children's series Press Gang on ITV, starring Julia Sawalha. 20 January – BBC2 airs live coverage of the inauguration of George H. W. Bush as the 41st President of the United States. 22 January – ITV launches an omnibus edition of Coronation Street which airs on Sunday afternoons; however, the repeat is not stranded across the network, with different regions airing it at different times. Some regions, including Central, later move the episode to a Saturday afternoon slot and the omnibus is dropped in some areas from September 1990. 24 January – BBC1 airs an episode of EastEnders, featuring a mouth-to-mouth gay kiss between the characters Colin Russell (Michael Cashman) and Guido Smith (Nicholas Donovan), the first time such a scene is shown in a British soap. It causes uproar among viewers and in the press. 26 January – Debut of the sitcom Joint Account on BBC1. 27 January – The US family sitcom Roseanne makes its UK debut on Channel 4, starring Roseanne Barr and John Goodman. 28 January The network television premiere of Richard Donner's 1985 adventure comedy The Goonies on ITV, starring Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Jeff Cohen, Corey Feldman, Kerri Green, Martha Plimpton and Ke Huy Quan. The US drama series Midnight Caller makes its UK debut on BBC1; it is one of the first television shows to address the dramatic possibilities of the growing phenomenon at this time of talk radio.
February 5 February – At 6pm, the world's first commercial DBS system, Sky Television, goes on the air. Three new channels, Sky News, Sky Movies and Eurosport, all launch, as well as the flagship Sky Channel, later renamed Sky One. 6 February Launch of the Sky News flagship breakfast programme, Sunrise, which will run until 2019. Sky Channel begins a rerun of its popular Australian medical soap opera series The Young Doctors, starting with the first-ever episode. 11 February – The Australian soap Home and Away makes its UK debut on ITV. It is the second networked Australian soap on that channel, following the short-lived Richmond Hill which is still airing during the afternoon. Home and Away is crucially scheduled in early evening slots of either 5:10pm, 6pm or 6:30pm across the ITV network and it immediately becomes the counterpart series to BBC1's Neighbours airing at 5:35pm. This scheduling continues thirty years later with both series now in these same slots but together on Channel 5. 12 February – ITV launches its Find a Family campaign to help find permanent homes for youngsters in care. 13 February – The first ITV national weather bulletin is broadcast. 14 February – Debut of Out on Tuesday on Channel 4, the UK's first weekly magazine series for gay and lesbian viewers. Later changing its name to Out, the show airs for four series before being axed in 1992. 15 February – ITV airs the Coronation Street episode in which Brian Tilsley is killed outside a nightclub. 18 February – Debut of the children's drama series Woof! on ITV, starring Liza Goddard. 23 February – Some 23 million viewers tune in to watch the exit of the hugely popular character Den Watts (Leslie Grantham) from EastEnders. Grantham filmed his final scenes in the show in the autumn of 1988, but his exit has been delayed into 1989 to avoid the show suffering the double blow of losing Den so soon after his former wife, Angie (Anita Dobson), who exited in May 1988. The character falls into a canal after being shot, but the character's exact fate is left unconfirmed. He will make a return to the show in 2003, before being killed off in 2005. 24 February – Debut of the children's game show Fun House on Children's ITV, presented by Pat Sharp. 25 February – The long-awaited WBA Heavyweight title fight between Britain's Frank Bruno and the USA's Mike Tyson is held at the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas. Because of the time difference between Britain and the US, the fight is televised in the UK in the early hours of 26 February. Tyson wins after the referee stops the bout in the fifth round. 26 February – BBC2 screens Alan Clarke's acclaimed football hooligan drama The Firm, starring Gary Oldman. February Channel 4 begins broadcasting in NICAM digital stereo, initially from the Crystal Palace transmitting station in London, prior to a national transmitter-by-transmitter roll-out during 1990. Anglia and Central reschedule Emmerdale Farm to 7pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
March 2 March My Brother David, an edition of the BBC2 schools series Scene, is first broadcast in which Simon Scarboro talks about the life of his brother David Scarboro, who originally played the EastEnders character Mark Fowler and who fell to his death from Beachy Head in 1988. The programme is repeated on 19 June for a general audience as part of BBC2's DEF II strand. After much publicity, a two-minute advert for Pepsi featuring Madonna's latest single "Like a Prayer" is shown during a commercial break on ITV, 12 minutes into The Bill. 6 March – Debut of the three-part ITV drama Winners and Losers, starring Leslie Grantham. The series is his first post-EastEnders role. 9 March – On Top of the Pops, comedian Lenny Henry joins regular presenter Nicky Campbell for a special Comic Relief edition of the programme. 10 March – On the second Red Nose Day, BBC1 airs the eight-hour telethon, A Night of Comic Relief 2. 15 March BBC1 airs John's Not Mad, an edition of the QED documentary strand that shadows John Davidson, a 15-year-old from Galashiels in Scotland with severe Tourette syndrome. The film explores John's life in terms of his family and the close-knit community around him and how they all cope with a misunderstood condition. Debut of the drama series Children's Ward on Children's ITV. 16 March – Debut of the children's sitcom Mike and Angelo on Children's ITV. 17 March – Channel 4 launches the Friday night chat show Clive Anderson Talks Back. 31 March The last Oracle on View transmission takes place on Channel 4. Night Network is broadcast for the final time on ITV regions that are not taking Granada's Night Time service. March The Independent Broadcasting Authority recommends that the headquarters of a fifth channel should be situated outside London, preferably at a location north of Birmingham. The Children's Channel launches free-to-air on Astra 1A, airing from 5am to 10am on weekdays and from 5am to 12pm on weekends, time-sharing with Lifestyle.
April 1 April Five Star appear on CBBC's Going Live! to promote their latest single With Every Heartbeat. During a live phone-in, a teenage caller verbally abuses them and asks why they are "so fucking crap". Presenter Sarah Greene quickly cuts off the call as the tirade continues. On 23 September 2019, an individual claiming to be Eliot Fletcher, the caller, apologises to the band for the incident via a social media account. However, doubt is then cast on the authenticity of the apology after several other people claim to be the notorious caller. Discovery Channel Europe launches. The channel broadcasts via Intelsat and on cable systems. The network television premiere of John G. Avildsen's 1984 martial arts drama The Karate Kid on ITV, starring Ralph Macchio, Pat Morita, Elisabeth Shue, William Zabka, Martin Kove and Chad McQueen. 2–3 April – ITV airs The Heroes, an Australian-British television miniseries based on the World War II Operation Jaywick, starring John Bach and Jason Donovan. 3 April Production of Children's ITV is taken over by independent producer Stonewall Productions. The strand continues to be broadcast from Central's studios at Broad Street in Birmingham as part of the agreement with a new rotating presenting team of Clive Warren, Jeanne Downs and Jerry Foulkes accompanying the network's puppet Scally the Dog. Channel 4 launches its breakfast television show The Channel Four Daily. The programme is based heavily on news and current affairs, with segments focusing on sports, finance, lifestyles, arts and entertainment and discussion. It is axed in 1992 after failing to gain enough viewers and is subsequently replaced by the much more popular The Big Breakfast. The Australian children's series The Bartons makes its UK debut on BBC1. 4 April – TUGS, a children's model animated series made by Clearwater Features (the British company behind the first two series of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends), makes its debut on Children's ITV. Also on the same day, the final episode of Hill Street Blues is broadcast on Channel 4 for the last time. 8 April As well as launching The Channel Four Daily on weekdays, Channel 4 also begin a weekend service from 6am to 9:25am with some segments from the aforementioned show being repeated as well as repeat showings of children's and education programmes. The US action series MacGyver makes its UK debut on BBC1, starring Richard Dean Anderson. 15 April – Hillsborough disaster. The BBC's cameras are at the Hillsborough ground in Sheffield to record the FA Cup semi-final clash between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest for their Match of the Day programme, but as the disaster unfolds, the events are relayed to their live sports show, Grandstand, resulting in the extreme emotional impact on the general British population. 20 April – John Leslie becomes the first Scottish presenter of Blue Peter on BBC1. 21 April – BBC2's 25th anniversary. Programming includes an edition of Arena in which the author Graham Greene sets out to trace a namesake who posed as him for many years and an edition of The Late Show which looks at the early BBC2 jazz programme Jazz 625. 24 April The BBC's Ceefax runs as a partial service only, due to a strike by broadcasting unions. Jon Snow joins Channel 4 News as its main newscaster, replacing Peter Sissons, who had presented the programme since its launch in November 1982. 26 April – BBC1 airs A Case of Spontaneous Human Combustion, a Q.E.D. documentary which sets out to investigate apparent instances of the phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion, combustion of the human body without an apparent external source of ignition. 27 April – BBC2 airs the 40 Minutes documentary Inside Broadmoor, a film showing life inside Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire.
May 1 May – The network television premiere of the 1984 science-fiction sequel Star Trek III: The Search for Spock on BBC1, starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley. 2 May – ITV airs an edition of the First Tuesday documentary strand investigating the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War called Four Hours in My Lai which is later shown in the US as part of the Frontline series with the title Remember My Lai.