This is a list of events that took place in 2019 relating to television in the United Kingdom.
Events January Date Event 1BBC One welcomes 2019 with a concert by Madness. The programme pauses at midnight for the Chimes of Big Ben and fireworks display.BBC One airs the New Year's Day special of Doctor Who, titled "Resolution", the last new episode of the programme to be shown until 2020. Overnight ratings suggest the episode to have been watched by an audience of 5.15 million.The fifth series of Luther begins on BBC One. The series attracts criticism from some viewers because of the perceived poor lighting in some scenes that make the content difficult to see. The series is shown over four consecutive nights.ITV introduces its first rebrand since 2013, with "ITV Creates", an artist led ident package, curated by Charlie Levine, with a different artist each week of the year and updated logo and presentation designed by DBLG. Week 1 of "ITV Creates" idents in 2019 is designed by Ravi Deepres.Sky Sports Racing replaces At The Races.Rob Lamarr and Jono Molloy present the final SuperCasino to be broadcast on Channel 5 after almost 15 years. The following night, Channel 5 begins temporarily airing teleshopping through the night to fill in the hours that SuperCasino left. The slot is taken over by 21.co.uk on 16 June.4Lisa Riley makes her return to Emmerdale as Mandy Dingle after 17 years.5The Greatest Dancer, a new dance competition programme featuring Cheryl, Matthew Morrison and Oti Mabuse on the judging panel, begins. It is the first programme to be created by Simon Cowell to air on BBC One.BBC Two airs the British terrestrial television premiere of Ken Loach's anti-austerity film I, Daniel Blake.ITV announces that ITV3 will broadcast two classic episodes of Emmerdale on weekday afternoons from 21 January.7Channel 4 broadcasts Brexit: The Uncivil War, a television film depicting the lead-up to the 2016 referendum that resulted in the vote to leave the European Union. The drama stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Dominic Cummings.ITV launches Week 2 of its "Creates" Ident package in 2019, designed by Sutapa Biswas.8Channel 4 takes full control of Box Plus Network. It had previously operated Box Plus Network in a 50/50 joint venture with Bauer Media.10Fiona Bruce presents her first edition of Question Time.After winning Strictly Come Dancing in 2018, Stacey Dooley is to present a new programme for BBC Three titled Glow Up: Britain's Next Make-Up Star, a programme searching for a make-up artist.11Channel 5 airs Episode 7000 of Home and Away.14ITV launches Week 3 of its "Creates" Ident package in 2019, designed by James Brunt.18Ant McPartlin returns to work with presenting partner Declan Donnelly following McPartlin's break from television after his arrest for drink driving in March 2018. The pair are reunited at the London Palladium for the auditions part of Britain's Got Talent and later appear in the first of a series of ITV advertisements for Santander Bank.20During the third live show of the eleventh series of Dancing on Ice, media personality and businesswoman, Gemma Collins has an on-screen argument with judge Jason Gardiner. Collins accuses Gardiner of selling stories to the press about her after Gardiner made comments about her weight and lack of commitment to the series.21ITV launches Week 4 of its "Creates" Ident package in 2019, designed by Patricia Volk.ITV3 starts showing classic episodes of soap opera Emmerdale. The repeats start from November 1989, when it was renamed from Emmerdale Farm to just Emmerdale. The repeats, which sees two episodes broadcast each day, follow two episodes of Classic Coronation Street, which have been airing on the channel since October 2017.22The 24th National Television Awards takes place at The O2 Arena in London and is shown on ITV presented by Dermot O'Leary. BBC One's Bodyguard leads the success story of the night by winning Most Popular Drama Series and Best Drama Performance for Richard Madden23George Alagiah returns to BBC News at Six following a year out due to cancer treatment.25BBC One announces plans to show a documentary about the murder of Jill Dando to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of her death in April 1999. The film will include "previously unseen archive and photographs", as well as contributions from her friends, relatives and colleagues.Olympic gymnast Beth Tweddle launches legal action against the makers of Channel 4's The Jump after fracturing vertebrae while taking part in the programme in 2016.Netflix has commissioned a miniseries of Sarah Pinborough's psychological thriller Behind Her Eyes. Steve Lightfoot is credited as the creator and executive producer of the series.27BBC One airs an episode of Call the Midwife featuring a story about a boy born with a cleft lip. The episode wins praise both from viewers and charities for its handling of the storyline.Businesswoman Jenny Campbell is to leave her Dragons' Den role at the end of the present series; she will make her last appearance on 3 February.Media personality and businesswoman, Gemma Collins suffers a fall during her live performance to Celine Dion's "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" on the fourth week of the eleventh series of Dancing on Ice. She falls on her face, nearly breaking her jaw and neck, and injures her knee significantly.28ITV launches Week 5 of its "Creates" Ident package in 2019, designed by Mark Titchner.29Footage of David Bowie's first television appearance as Ziggy Stardust on an ITV music programme in 1972 has been unearthed. The thought-to-be-lost footage is of Bowie on an edition of Granada Television's Lift Off with Ayesha. It was recorded on a home video recorder and will undergo a restoration process as the film had degraded with time.30An annual survey of five- to sixteen-year-olds' viewing habits conducted by Childwise has indicated the US sitcom Friends to be the most popular programme among that age group.31ITV pulls the documentary Fred & Rose West: The Real Story with Trevor McDonald shortly before its scheduled transmission due to unspecified legal concerns. ITV says the documentary, which alleges Rose West was as violent and dangerous as her husband Fred, will now air at a later date. The documentary is subsequently rescheduled for 21 February.
February Date Event1The government announces that the television licence fee will rise from £150.50 to £154.50 on 1 April.4ITV launches Week 6 of its "Creates" Ident package in 2019, designed by Katrina Russell-Adams.5BBC Two viewers vote Alan Turing the most iconic figure of the 20th Century following a series that asked the public to name the century's greatest figure.ITV announces it is axing two of its sitcoms – Birds of a Feather and Bad Move.7Artists Studio announces it is developing a reboot of the 1980s Jersey-based detective series Bergerac. The project is backed by Endemol Shine UK and Westward Studios.8Michael Rice is chosen by viewers of BBC Two's Eurovision: You Decide to represent the United Kingdom at the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest with his anthem "Bigger than Us".10The 72nd British Academy Film Awards take place at the Royal Albert Hall in London and are shown on BBC One. Joanna Lumley hosts the awards for a second time. Yorgos Lanthimos's film The Favourite leads the nominations with 12, Bradley Cooper and Alfonso Cuarón break records by receiving multiple nominations in multiple categories with Amy Adams, Olivia Colman and Steve Coogan receiving their seventh BAFTA nominations.11ITV launches Week 7 of its "Creates" Ident package in 2019, designed by Kristina Veasey.Channel 4 says it will go ahead with plans to screen the controversial Michael Jackson documentary Leaving Neverland in spite of receiving a request from the singer's estate for it not to be aired. The film, due to air on 6 and 7 March, features two men who claim they were abused by Jackson as children. The Jackson family had asked for the film not to be screened since they had not been given the chance to respond to the allegations.12Details of BBC Scotland's flagship news programme, The Nine, are released. The 60-minute programme will air daily from 9.00 pm and has a fifteen-strong team of presenters and reporters. It will be anchored by Rebecca Curran and Martin Geissler.13Plans are announced to shorten the Monday to Thursday editions of BBC News at Ten from 45 minutes to 35 minutes from 4 March in order to make way for a new BBC Three strand of programming, and to avoid clashing with the start of BBC Two's Newsnight, which begins at 10.30 pm. The BBC Three strand will run from Mondays to Wednesdays at 10.35 pm, with Question Time continuing to air after the news on Thursdays.Dermot O'Leary announces he is to quit his role as presenter of the National Television Awards after ten years.Professional dancer Pasha Kovalev announces he is leaving Strictly Come Dancing after eight years with the series.14The BBC defends its forthcoming CBBC series Living with the Lams amid concerns its characters are racial stereotypes. The group BEATS (British East Asians working in Theatre and Screen) has expressed concerns about the series, about a Chinese family running a restaurant in Manchester, after scripts for it became available, because the series will be written by few British East Asian writers. The BBC says that they do not select writers and producers "based solely on their cultural affiliations or nationality", but that it is "confident" that it will make a show which "successfully reflects and celebrates this community".Graham Norton and Alan Carr are named as judges on RuPaul's Drag Race UK, which is set to debut on BBC Three later in the year.Nickelodeon confirms plans for a new series of Paddington Bear, which will be voiced by Ben Whishaw.15BBC One decides not to recommission its late night politics discussion programme This Week after Andrew Neil announced his intention to leave his role as its presenter. The current series is due to end in July, after which it will disappear from the schedules.17BBC Two Scotland closes in preparation for the launch of the BBC Scotland channel. Viewers in Scotland can still watch the national version of BBC Two, with regional content aired by BBC Two Scotland being transferred to the new channel.18ITV launches Week 8 of its "Creates" Ident package in 2019, designed by James Alec Hardy, marking the end of the first wave of idents.19Virgin Media stops providing BBC Four, BBC News, CBBC and CBeebies in standard definition.20The 2019 Brit Awards are held at the O2 Arena and are shown on ITV. Comedian Jack Whitehall hosts the awards for a second time. For the first time in Brit Awards history, the nominations are dominated by women, with Jess Glynne, Dua Lipa and Anne-Marie leading the nominations with four nods each.21ITV airs Fred & Rose West: The Real Story with Trevor McDonald after it was pulled by them on 31 January, the day before it was originally supposed to air.23Ellie Ferguson wins the first series of The Greatest Dancer.24A new BBC Scotland channel launches and replaces BBC Two Scotland. Overnight figures indicate it to have had a peak viewership of 700,000, with five of the top ten programmes seen in Scotland being aired by BBC Scotland.25BBC Scotland launches its weekday flagship news programme The Nine.ITV launches Week 9 of its "Creates" Ident package in 2019, designed by Alec Stevens, marking the start of the second wave of idents.27The BBC and ITV announce they are in the final stages of discussions to set up a UK version of the BritBox streaming service as a rival to Netflix. BritBox is currently available to viewers in the US and Canada, where it provides UK television content to around 500,000 subscribers.Launch of The Debate, BBC Scotland's weekly political debate show.
March