Rupert Murdoch announces the launch of Sky TV today in 1988. Channel 4 News and Newsnight react thus.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: BBC1 starts up with The Saturday Picture Show. but Mark Curry has a letter in braille, Cheryl Baker's friend has been hypnotised, some puppets made of rubbish visit, Gary Davies demonstrates a camera and Chucklehounds lurk.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Jim 'Bisop Brennan' Norton plays the ageing Stan Laurel in silent film expert Neil Brand's BBC4 film Stan, making a final visit to a dying Oliver Hardy (Trevor Cooper, long time bit-parter and uncle of Daisy May and Charlie)

60 YEARS AGO TODAY: moos officially became sillier with the first proper episode of Till Death Us Do Part. The Conservatives formally complained to the BBC about Alf's description of Edward Heath.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: a Film On Four adapted from a French book and filmed in France with a mostly French cast and the French-named Cherie Lunghi, Letters To An Unknown Lover is about an escaped POW taking refuge with two sisters.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: The X Factor: Battle Of The Stars is the ultimate in "ITV are short of advertising income, Simon, can you do something?", and even Cowell later called it "pointless". Finalists Lucy Benjamin and Matt Stevens did not trouble BMG.

RIP Anthony Head. Right at the start of his TV acting career he appeared in 1978 ITV Channel Islands WWII drama Enemy At The Door, having a head to head with Gary Waldhorn, the future Councillor David Horton in The Vicar Of Dibley.

Seven more days to round up: whydontyoutube.substack.com/p/the-why-do...

Opening with music straight from a cheap sell-through VHS travelogue, Craig Charles Goes Mad In Melbourne today in 1988, going behind the scenes at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: how does Doctor Who keep losing the TARDIS? Has he thought about a basic tracking device? The Impossible Planet is the first of a two-parter that introduces popular slave nation the Ood and returns to the old Who standby of a quarry.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: the unique Ivor Cutler on Whistle Test.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: They Think It's All Over's World Cup special, right near its end so presented by Lee Mack in a phase nobody, maybe including Mack, remembers. Boris Becker, Sean Lock, Steffen Freund face Ian Wright, Rory McGrath and Glenn Hoddle.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Siadwel celebrates Christmas on Naked Video.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Channel 4's series of documentaries behind the back of telly Open The Box interrogates an episode of Crossroads from script to screen, chiefly the creation and casting of new prospective pin-up Mickey Doyle.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Surprise Surprise, in which Terry Nutkins takes two women to wash an elephant, Gordon Banks and Stanley Matthews replace a lost autograph, Philippa Forrester goes to Egypt, and Let Loose and Bob Downe appear for some reason.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Janet Ellis goes to visit A-Ha on the Hunting High And Low video set. Directed by Steve Barron (Take On Me, Billie Jean, Money For Nothing), CSO is involved so of course Blue Peter was all over it.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Juliet Morris and Raymond Baxter on the ground celebrate Heathrow At 50 with an anniversary flypast.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: for some reason ITV revive Saturday Live with a completely different cast, set and production team. It failed after one series but did have a breakout star in Harry Hill.

In this week's newsletter archive: Simon Groom sings, "sickening" Kenny Lynch, early Johnny Ball, Nationwide disapproves of both David Bowie and jogging, the last Magpie, Tub Of Lard, Ben Elton's RPG and Richard Whiteley causes a building to collapse. whydontyoutube.substack.com/p/the-why-do...

25 year old Liam Neeson, still five months away from his TV acting debut, fronts educational show Ulster In Focus today in 1978, presenting a history of the country's railways with Neeson taking on a variety of narrative roles.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Jack And Jeremy's Real Lives, a series of spoof documentaries by Messrs Dee and Hardy with a title sequence based on a Gilbert & George work. The first programme sees them as aristocratic brothers with surprising foil Emily Mortimer.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: the latest tale in Murder Most Horrid pitches Dawn French as wife of the next PM Hugh Laurie, who find dead bodies under their kitchen floor and try and get rid of them themselves with farcicial consequences.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Alan Davies is the next stand-in captain on Have I Got News For You. Guests are the first of five appearances by Rich Hall and Rupert Allason MP, who two years later would unsuccessfully sue the BBC for libel over a HIGNFY tie-in book.

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: we missed this on New Year's Day, but after winning the Montreux Festival Bronze Rose BBC1 repeat the Two Ronnies' The Picnic, a silent film with Ronnie Hazlehurst score and script by "Dave Huggett and Larry Keith" (Ronnie Barker)

40 YEARS AGO TODAY

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Janice Long guests on The Saturday Picture Show to talk to the Pet Shop Boys. Just a shame nobody had the board with the address ready in time.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: the World Cup was almost upon us, as per ITV's preview show within the home country's camps with a rare chance to see Ron Atkinson sunbathing, John Helm in a slum and Mick Channon's celebrated inability to pronounce 'Lineker' properly.

70 YEARS AGO TODAY: at the peak of Goondom Associated-Rediffusion give Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers their own extraordinary sketch series, A Show Called Fred. Only five were ever made and it reportedly earned the most complaints of any ITV show so far.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: The Chart Show specialist chart in the middle takes its only ever visit to the Euro Chart, featuring the contemporary fascination with Princess Stephanie of Monaco's singing career. Even HUD admits "is this a duff video or what?"

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: the Grange Hill cast visit the White House and meet Nancy Reagan off the back of Just Say No. Newsround Extra shows what they've been up to, not including all the potentially true anecdotes the cast have got out of it since.

US public access television showcase Manhattan Cable today in 1991 features Laurie Pike in an empty sex club, the show's great discovery RuPaul investigating a black doll manufacturer, and Pike claiming Madonna: Truth Or Dare won't ever air in Britain.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: the second year of Springwatch gets underway, with a teasing Bill Oddie and Kate Humble in Devon, and Simon King out in Shetland with some otters and a lot of blue tits.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: clutching of pearls across the land as a Mastermind contestant takes the Sex Pistols and punk as his specialist subject. This made the front page of the Times, which primly noted how it deals with the word "bollocks".

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Pete Wylie on #totp, after which John Peel makes a famous and unfortunately never followed up on promise. www.youtube.com/watc...

Tyne Tees' yoof before yoof show Check It Out today in 1979 hosts earnest debate about youth opportunities schemes and fashion design.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: the Peacock Report into the financing of the BBC backs the licence fee and ruins ITV instead by introducing deregulation and the franchise tenders. Newsnight under Peter Snow tries to work out what it all means.

Catchup time: whydontyoutube.substack.com/p/the-why-do...

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Peter Davison's everyman young doctor in A Very Peculiar Practice is convinced to attend the sermon of a Scottish lay preacher. Why is Hugh Grant playing a Scotsman? Don't ask us.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: for reasons, Top Gear converts a Mercedes S-Class into a moving cottage with concrete flooring and a wood-burning stove. Then, Clarkson's role done, Hammond and May try to drive it.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Take Two, Philip Schofield's Children's BBC feedback show, visits the set of Grange Hill, including meeting Lee McDonald and Alison Bettles' mums.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: BBC2's bank holiday Monday is An Evening In With Billy Connolly, including a stage show talking through and introducing the shows, people and events that influenced his life and career, linked as World Tour Of Television.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: despite being filmed in Vancouver, written by a contributor to The Adventures Of Young Indiana Jones and co-produced by Fox the BBC made sure Doctor Who: The Movie was a Paul McGann-led continuation rather than full reboot just in case.

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Z-Cars' Barlow and Watt reunite for Second Verdict, a series framing historical cold case discussions in an uncomfortable mix of true crime and false surroundings docudrama. The Lindbergh baby kidnapping is up first. www.youtube.com/watch?v=00df...

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: the standout of Ruby Flipper's brief #totp stint as the men get to do an impressionistic routine to David Bowie's TVC15. Why is Floyd dressed as a jockey? Why is that the least of the many, many questions raised?

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: syntactical parlour gamery on Call My Bluff. Frank Muir is joined by Gabrielle Drake and Russell Harty, Patrick Campbell by Patrick Mower and Nanette Newman. www.youtube.com/watc...

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: not the biggest Doctor Who anniversary of the day, but Mark Gatiss' The Idiot's Lantern deserves its place, being about the Coronation TV audience having their energy extracted and consumed by Maureen Lipman as an escaped alien.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: the second part of Dennis Potter's hands across the networks final statement series Cold Lazarus, in which Albert Finney's self-insert playwright is brought out of cryogenic suspension, gets a Channel 4 premiere.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Rab C Nesbitt, in the first Naked Video sketch in which he's named, visits the benefit office.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Stephen Fry tells The Clive James Show about his Hungarian grandfather, Irene Handl's reaction to CSO and how he should have appeared in Hello! magazine.