2007 in American television
The following is a list of events affecting American television in 2007. Events listed include television show debuts, finales, cancellations, and new channel launches.
Notable events
January
| Date |
Event |
| 1 |
Playhouse Disney rebrands with all new mascots which are named Ooh and Ahh. |
| 29 |
i is relaunched as ION Television. |
February
| Date |
Event |
| 22 |
The O.C. airs for the final episode on Fox. |
March
April
| Date |
Event |
| 11 |
MSNBC announces its simulcast of radio's Imus in the Morning would be canceled, effective immediately, after public outcry against host Don Imus' derogatory remarks about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. Imus' relationship with his show's radio distributor, CBS Radio, would be terminated later in the spring over the same incident. |
May
June
| Date |
Event |
| 15 |
Bob Barker hosts The Price Is Right for the final time, ending his 35-year tenure on the show and 50 years on television. CBS airs Barker's final episode in both its regular daytime slot and in prime time, the latter airing as a lead-in to the 34th Daytime Emmy Awards. |
| For the first time ever, two soap operas share honors for Outstanding Drama Series at the Daytime Emmy Awards (Guiding Light and The Young and the Restless). |
| 26 |
In an on-air protest over trivial journalism (specifically MSNBC producers ranking Paris Hilton's release from jail ahead of developments in the Iraq War), newsreader Mika Brzezinski attempts to set fire to a news script, tears up a second, and shreds a third. |
| 29 |
After 8 years, Cartoon Network ends its Friday night block, Fridays. The block originally began as Cartoon Cartoon Fridays in June 1999, becoming Summer Fridays in May 2003 before being known simply as Fridays in late September of the same year. |
July
August
| Date |
Event |
| 17 |
The Disney Channel's premiere showing of High School Musical 2 becomes the most-watched made-for-cable movie ever, drawing in 17.24 million viewers. |
| 30 |
The Big Ten Network formally launches, but its debut is marred by its failure to reach carriage agreements with Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Charter Cable, and several other smaller providers serving the conference's geographical footprint. The dispute goes unsolved for nearly a year, causing millions of fans to miss several games seen in previous years via local syndication, public broadcasting stations connected to universities, and ESPN's family of networks. |
September
October
November
| Date |
Event |
| 5 |
The Writers Guild of America commences a strike against television and movie production studios; the strike lasts until February 2008, but not before production on TV shows are halted and networks' schedules are severely disrupted. |
| 12 |
Nickelodeon promotes its very first SpongeBob SquarePants TV movie, Atlantis SquarePantis, attracting 8.8 million viewers. |
| 15 |
Jorja Fox appears for the last time as a regular cast member as investigator Sara Sidle on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. |
| 19 |
Firebrand, a nightly television program broadcast television advertising from around the world, debuts on Ion Television. |
December
| Date |
Event |
| 3 |
ESPN's Monday Night Football telecast of the unbeaten New England Patriots and the Baltimore Ravens draws 17.52 million viewers, breaking the basic cable viewership record set earlier in the year by Disney Channel's High School Musical 2. |
| 23 |
Ashlee Register wins the $1,720,000 jackpot, along with a banked total of $75,000, for a grand total of $1,795,000 on Duel. She becomes the second female contestant to win $1,000,000 or more on a game show and sets the record for the highest amount of money won on a game show by a woman. |
| 29 |
After weeks of political pressure (and, to a lesser extent, acknowledging the limited reach of the NFL Network), the National Football League allows that network's broadcast of the game between the New England Patriots and New York Giants to be simulcast nationally on league broadcast partners CBS and NBC. The Patriots would win the game to become the first team in NFL history to go undefeated in a 16-game regular season. (The teams would meet again later in Super Bowl XLII, where the Giants won the NFL title and prevented the Pats from going 19–0.) |
| 31 |
Nickelodeon Games and Sports for Kids leaves the air (although it stayed on Dish Network until April 23, 2009, when it was replaced by the west coast feed of Cartoon Network) and is replaced by The N, allowing that kids-oriented network and its sister channel Noggin to air on a 24/7 basis after previously sharing the same channel space. |
Programs
Debuts
Ending this year
Changes of Network Affiliation
Deaths
References