October 17 - Fred Astaire makes his TV starring debut in the NBC special, An Evening with Fred Astaire, which goes on to win 9 Emmys and is one of the first TV specials to be preserved on videotape.
November 28 - During the live broadcast of the Armchair Theatre play Underground on the ITV network in the UK, actorGareth Jones dies between two of his scenes while in make-up. Director William Kotcheff is forced to improvise with his cast to carry on the play to its conclusion, with producer Sydney Newman ordering him to "shoot it like a football match".
Senator Estes Kefauver holds congressional hearings on the rising rates of juvenile crime and publishes an article in Reader's Digest called "Let's Get Rid of Tele-Violence."
In the United Kingdom, the top-rated show of the year was the ITV game show Dotto, adapted from an American game show which in turn was based on children's Connect the Dots game.
The original American version of "Dotto" was the first game show to be implicated in the Scandals, and was abruptly cancelled in August.
Top-rated prime-time game show "Twenty One" was abruptly dropped by NBC in October after former contestant Herb Stempel charged that the show was rigged and that he had been ordered to lose a match to the popular Charles Van Doren.
Fall ? The Scandals involving rigged network quiz shows spread, resulting in the cancellation of the original big-money game show, CBS' "The $64,000 Question", and creating havoc within the US television industry.
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