3 February – The Annan Committee on the future of broadcasting makes its recommendations. They include the establishment of a fourth independent television channel, the establishment of Broadcasting Complaints Commission and an increase in independent production.[2]
14 February – BBC1 debut the children's animated series The Flumps, which, although only 13 episodes are ever produced, will be broadcast on the BBC until 1988.
24 February – ITV begins showing the US medical mystery drama series Quincy, M.E., starring Jack Klugman.
26 February – The network television premiere of the 1965 James Bond film Thunderball airs on ITV, starring Sean Connery in his fourth 007 adventure.[3]
27 March – Jesus of Nazareth, a British-Italian television miniseries co-produced by Lew Grade dramatising the birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus based on the accounts in the four New Testament Gospels makes its debut on British television, starring Robert Powell as Jesus.
28 March – Yorkshire Television and Tyne Tees Television launch a nine-week breakfast television experiment. It is credited as being the United Kingdom's first breakfast television programme, six years before the launch of TV-am and the BBC's Breakfast Time in 1983.[4][5] Both programmes run at the same time, with Tyne Tees' Good Morning North and Yorkshire's Good Morning Calendar. Both programmes finish on Friday 27 May.
April
7 April – BBC1 begins showing a new series of the American cartoon The Scooby-Doo Show, following several years of repeating older episodes.
22 April – The original series of motoring programme Top Gear begins as a local magazine format produced by (and shown only by) BBC Midlands from its Pebble Mill Studios in Birmingham, presented by Angela Rippon and Tom Coyne. In 1978, it is offered to BBC2 where it airs until 2001. In 2002, the series is relaunched in a new format.
7 July – The first episode of the BBC documentary series Brass Tacks is aired, featuring a debate as to whether Myra Hindley should be considered for parole from the life sentence she received for her role in the Moors murders in 1966.
17 October – BBC1 launch the long-running variety and chat show Des O'Connor Tonight.
19 October – The first edition of a new weekly magazine programme for Asian women, Gharbar, is broadcast. The programme had only been intended to run for 26 weeks but continues for around 500 weeks, finally ending in April 1987.[6]
21 October – The World Administrative Radio Conference assigns five high-powered direct broadcast by satellite channels for domestic use in the UK.[7]
26 November – Southern Television broadcast interruption: Just after 5:10pm in the Southern Television ITV region, a hoaxer hijacks the sound of Independent Television News from the IBA transmitter at Hannington, Hampshire and broadcasts a message claiming to be a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command. Thousands of viewers ring Southern, the IBA, ITN or the police for an explanation; the identity of the intruder is never confirmed.
31 December – Bruce Forsyth steps down as presenter of The Generation Game after six years. He would return to the programme when it is revived by the BBC in 1990.[19]
Undated
Scum, an entry in BBC1's Play for Today anthology strand, is pulled from transmission due to controversy over its depiction of life in a Young Offenders' Institution, at this time known in the United Kingdom as a borstal. Two years later the director Alan Clarke makes a film version with most of the same cast and the original play itself is eventually transmitted on BBC2 in 1991.[20]