In American television in 2022, notable events included television show debuts, finales, and cancellations; channel launches, closures, and re-brandings; stations changing or adding their network affiliations; information on controversies, business transactions, and carriage disputes; and deaths of those who made various contributions to the medium.
Notable events
January DateEventSource1Kentucky's Fox affiliate WDKY launched its own news department in January 2022, ending a 27-year outsourcing deal with a CBS affiliate. The move follows a studio upgrade and comes with expanded news coverage.3 The Major League Baseball-owned MLB Network declines to renew the contract of insider Ken Rosenthal; it is believed to be the result of Rosenthal's criticisms of league commissioner Rob Manfred's handling of the pandemic-altered 2020 season. Rosenthal retains positions as MLB reporter for Fox Sports and writer for The Athletic (where he penned his critiques of Manfred).Art Rascon retires from broadcasting after 36 years, 23 of which were with KTRK-TV/Houston (serving as a midday and 5:00 p.m. anchor and field reporter). On his final day at the ABC O&O, Rascon co-anchors its 11:00 a.m. newscast alongside son Jacob (previously with rival NBC affiliate KPRC), who made his KTRK debut as an anchor/reporter on that date.4–6Two late-night talk shows pause production after their hosts test positive for COVID-19: NBC's Late Night cancels its scheduled tapings through January 6 in the wake of host Seth Meyers' positive test one day after their January 3 return from a holiday production hiatus (Meyers' guests for that show joined in remotely). On the 6th, CBS' Late Late Show also goes dark through January 18 due to James Corden's own positive test. Meyers' and Corden's diagnoses come after Jimmy Fallon, whose The Tonight Show tapes in the same building as Late Night, revealed he tested COVID-positive after his show's December 17 taping, just before Tonights own holiday hiatus; Fallon (who was fully vaccinated, as are Meyers and Corden) fully recovered before production resumed on January 3, meaning Tonight did not have to face postponements. However, Fallon was revealed to have been intended to make a cameo on Saturday Night Live'''s December 18 episode, and thus may have contributed to the episode's emergency reformatting. Late Night would return with Meyers hosting remotely for the week of January 10–13 with most crew members working from home or in-studio, before returning to the studio.
!rowspan="2"|5 |Thirteen current and former female staffers file a gender discrimination lawsuit against the Black News Channel in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, claiming that management paid female employees significantly less than male staffers, harbored a misogynistic work culture that forced them to conform to behavioral gender stereotypes, and retaliated against those who complained about the pay disparities and personal treatment. Two of the plaintiffs in the amended lawsuit had filed a prior complaint against BNC in August 2021.
|After Kevin Porter Jr. hits a game-winning three-pointer, Washington Wizards broadcaster Glenn Consor remarks on the NBC Sports Washington broadcast that the Houston Rockets star, "like his dad, pulled the trigger at the right time." But Consor's comment draws the ire on social media, from LeBron James and others, as Porter's father went to prison after pleading guilty in the 1993 shooting death of a 14-year-old girl. In apologizing for the incident, Consor claimed he thought Kevin Porter Jr. was related to former Washington player Kevin Porter.
!rowspan="2"|7 |The Magnolia Network, which replaced DIY Network three days before, pulls the home renovation series Home Work from their schedule and Discovery+ presence (where it had streamed since the summer of 2021), following allegations from three subject families of not meeting timelines, high additional costs, and lack of communication by the show's hosts, Andy and Candis Meredith. The show would be returned to the lineups on January 13.
|By earning $42,220 in her 28th victory, Amy Schneider becomes the first female contestant and fourth overall to win over $1 million in regular gameplay on Jeopardy!. Schneider would go on to surpass Matt Amodio for the second-most consecutive wins in the game show's history with her 39th victory on January 24. Her win streak ended at 40 two days later. (Ken Jennings, who has presided over Schneider's win streak as part-time interim host, holds the most consecutive wins with 74 during his streak as Jeopardy! champion in 2004.)
!9 |The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) hands out the 79th Golden Globe Awards, with notable TV winners including Succession (Best Drama Series), Hacks (Best Comedy Series), and Poses Mj Rodriguez (the first openly trans person to win a Globe, for Best Actress in a Drama Series). The Globes are distributed in a private, non-televised ceremony (and winners announced via press release and the HPFA's social media channels) in light of broadcast rightsholder NBC's support of a boycott by various media organizations, actors, and other creatives over the HFPA's inadequate efforts to address the membership diversity of the organization (NBC carried the final game of the NFL regular season played between the Los Angeles Chargers and Las Vegas Raiders on this evening).
!12 |Richard Burgi confirms in an Instagram post that he was fired from The Young and the Restless for an inadvertent breach of distributor Sony Pictures Television's COVID-19 protocols, disclosing that he isolated for five days after testing COVID-positive during the CBS soap opera's holiday production hiatus in December—in accordance with prior CDC guidelines, revised that month to a five-day isolation period—rather than the SPT requirement for personnel to isolate for ten days which had not been revised. He then returned to the set five days early, testing negative twice. In contrast to other soap actors that were fired for COVID policy violations in 2021, some of whom publicly criticized their studios and networks, Burgi expressed sincere regret for his judgement. Robert Newman, known for playing Josh Lewis on Guiding Light off-and-on from 1981 until its 2009 conclusion, assumed the role of Ashland Locke (which Burgi had played since the character debuted in March 2021) on the February 9 episode, and portrayed the character on-screen until July 25.
!14 |DirecTV announces it would cease carriage of One America News Network and AWE when the namesake satellite provider and sister service U-verse TV's contract with parent company Herring Networks expires on April 4. The radicalist-leaning, conservative OAN has received criticism for pushing conspiracy theories (particularly involving COVID-19 vaccines and health restrictions, and debunked claims of electoral fraud during the 2020 presidential election and left-wing involvement in the January 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol) while gaining support from former president Donald Trump. Wealth culture-focused AWE has had issues involving the low overall appeal of its programming during economic recessions (most recently during the COVID-19 recession), and aggressive carriage demands. Seven months later on July 21, Verizon Fios, which became the network's largest remaining pay-TV carrier after the DirecTV removal, announced it would drop OAN on July 31, after failing to agree on a new contract; this relegates OAN's distribution to smaller cable providers and OTA subchannels in select markets, ad-supported live-TV streaming platforms (including Pluto TV and Xumo), and its proprietary subscription streaming service.
!19 |WSAZ/Huntington, West Virginia, multimedia journalist Tori Yorgey is struck by an SUV while reporting live from the scene of a water main break in Dunbar during that night's 11:00 p.m. newscast. Yorgey—who conducted the report roadside in wet and icy conditions, and continued with the report afterward—was uninjured, but was taken to a local hospital for observation as a precaution. (The accident occurred during Yorgey's last week at WSAZ; she became a reporter for ABC affiliate WTAE/Pittsburgh on February 1.)
!24 |Deadline Hollywood reports ViacomCBS (now Paramount Global) halted its proposed reformatting of the general entertainment Paramount Network as the primarily film-focused Paramount Movie Network, citing the success of original drama series Yellowstone and COVID-related production delays of its planned telefilm output. First announced in September 2020, the reformatted channel was to offer original made-for-cable movies (including 52 new films per year), limited scripted series and miniseries (at least one per quarter), and films from the Paramount Pictures library. In preparation for the change, several of the network's original unscripted programs were either canceled outright or moved to its sister channels or to Paramount+ during late 2020 and 2021.
!25 |Bravo fires Jennie Nguyen from the cast of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City after racially offensive comments and memes, including many mocking the Black Lives Matter movement, that she shared on Facebook during the 2020 anti-police brutality protests had resurfaced on social media.
!26 |TLC fires Alina Kozhevnikova from the cast of 90 Day Fiancé (as well as spin-offs Before the 90 Days and the upcoming 90 Day Fiancé: Tell All) after past social media posts mocking various races and religions resurfaced (among them, a now-deleted 2014 post in which she used "nigga" eight times when describing a party she had been invited to in her native Russia, and one from 2015 mocking Hugh Grant's eldest daughter, who is half-Chinese, for being "kinda Asian.").
!27 |Stephanie Ruhle is named permanent anchor of The 11th Hour. In addition to her usual 9:00 a.m. ET slot (absorbed by Morning Joe upon her move), she had been serving as one of several rotating hosts of the MSNBC program since original anchor Brian Williams's departure from the network in December. Ruhle's first 11th Hour broadcast aired March 2, with Morning Joe's expanded fourth hour airing on April 4.
!31 |During a discussion on The View about the controversy surrounding the McMinn County, Tennessee school district's January 10 ban of the Holocaust-focused graphic novel Maus, moderator Whoopi Goldberg claims that the Holocaust was about "man's inhumanity to man" and not based on race (appearing to characterize race—as she clarified during her appearance on that night's The Late Show with Stephen Colbert—in the narrower construct of ethnicity/skin color, rather than the broader outgroup context in line with Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party's view of Jews as an "inferior race" on religious grounds). Goldberg later apologized for the remarks amid widespread criticism from Jewish groups, and was placed on a two-week suspension by ABC News on February 1; she returned to The View'' on February 14.
February