Events

• January 3 - Hullabaloo shows promotional videos of The Beatles songs "Day Tripper" and "We Can Work It Out".
• January 8 - Shindig! airs for the last time on ABC, with musical guests the Kinks and the Who.
• February 23 - Television is first broadcast in Greece when ERT went on the air.
• May 15 - First Japanese popular Owarai variety show program Shoten on air by Nippon Television Network, this program watching more than 25 million Japanese every week.
• June - Color television broadcasts begin in the Philippines, aired on ABS-CBN.
• June 5 - A taped appearance by The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. The band debuts their music videos for "Rain" and "Paperback Writer".
• June 27 - The first episode of the supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows airs on ABC, introducing Victoria Winters (Alexandra Moltke) to the viewing audience as she applies for a job at the Collinwood Manor.
• July 1 - First Canadian color television broadcast.
• July 10 - Ultraman makes his debut on television in Japan. The character would spawn over 16 television adaptions over the next 40 years.
• Summer - Patrick McGoohan quits the popular spy series Danger Man (aired in the US as Secret Agent) after filming only two episodes of the fourth season, in order to produce and star in The Prisoner, which begins filming in September.
• September 3 - The last episode of the television series The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet airs.
• September 7 - The final episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show airs (the first episode aired on October 3, 1961).
• September 8 - The first episode to air, "The Man Trap" premieres on NBC.
• October 2 - The four-part serial Talking to a Stranger, acclaimed as one of the finest British television dramas of the 1960s, begins transmission in the Theatre 625 strand on BBC2.
• October 27 - It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown airs for the first time on CBS.
• October 29 - Actor William Hartnell makes his last regular appearance as the First Doctor in the concluding moments of Episode 4 of the Doctor Who serial The Tenth Planet. Actor Patrick Troughton briefly appears as the Second Doctor at the conclusion of the serial.
• November 5 - Actor Patrick Troughton appears in his first full Doctor Who serial The Power of the Daleks as the Second Doctor.
• November 16 - Cathy Come Home, possibly the best-known play ever to be broadcast on British television, is transmitted in BBC1's The Wednesday Play anthology strand.
• December 21 - A Christmas Memory, Truman Capote's childhood experiences, captured in the 1956 memoir, adapted for television and narrated by Capote himself. Directed by Frank Perry on ABC Stage 67 and featuring Geraldine Page in an Emmy Award-winning performance.
• December 18: CBS airs the television adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas for the first time.
• The 1951-1953 CBS sitcom Amos & Andy is pulled from circulation due to complaints from civil rights organizations.
• Macdonald Carey starts reciting the epigram "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives" at the beginning of his dramatic serial, Days of Our Lives, a tradition that continues today, over a decade after his passing.
• October 17 - As of this date, all of NBC's newscasts are in color.

Debuts