1992 in American television
The year 1992 in television involved some significant events. Below is a list of television-related events during 1992.
Events
| Date | Event |
| January 6 | The weekly overnight news program World News Now debuts on ABC. |
| January 10 | The Days of Our Lives nighttime special One Stormy Night is broadcast by NBC. |
| January 26 | During halftime of CBS' telecast of Super Bowl XXVI, Fox counter-programs with a special live-edition of the sketch comedy program In Living Color. |
| February 24 | CBS acquires the assets of Midwest Communications, owners of the network's dominant affiliate in the Twin Cities, WCCO-TV. This also results in an affiliation swap in both Marquette, Michigan and Green Bay, Wisconsin: WJMN-TV, the Midwest-owned satellite station of Green Bay's ABC affiliate WFRV-TV, swaps its own ABC affiliation with primary CBS/secondary NBC affiliate WLUC-TV on this date, while WFRV-TV itself swaps with CBS affiliate WBAY-TV on March 15. |
| March 28 | CBS broadcasts the East Regional men's basketball final between Duke and Kentucky. With 2.1 seconds remaining in overtime, Christian Laettner hit a jumper as time expired to give Duke the 104–103 win. The game which was called by Verne Lundquist and Len Elmore, has since been considered by many to be the greatest college basketball game ever played. |
| April 4 | TBS' Saturday afternoon/early evening World Championship Wrestling program is renamed WCW Saturday Night. |
| April 6 | Barney & Friends debuts on PBS. |
| April 29 | Batman makes its broadcast television premiere on CBS. |
| April 30 | The Cosby Show airs its series finale on NBC. |
| April 30 | The Nickelodeon time capsule was buried at Nickelodeon Studios in Orlando, Florida. |
| May 1 | Sesame Street broadcasts its 3,000th episode. |
| May 22 | After 30 years, 66-year-old Johnny Carson hosts The Tonight Show on NBC for the 4,531st and last time. |
| May 25 | Jay Leno debuts as host of NBC's The Tonight Show. |
| May 30 | The final Hee Haw airs in syndication. |
| June 1 | In New York City, NBC's flagship television station WNBC dropped the "-TV" suffix from its call letters in favor of the new branding slogan "4 New York". The accompanying station image campaign was titled We're 4 New York and featured a musical theme composed by Edd Kalehoff. The campaign is revived two times, one is during the 2002 Winter Olympics and the recent one in 2007. |
| June 3 | Presidential candidate Bill Clinton appears on The Arsenio Hall Show and sits in with the house band on saxophone. |
| June 10 | The first ever edition of the MTV Movie Awards is broadcast. |
| June 23 | Another World broadcasts its first and only primetime episode on NBC, named Summer Desire, right before the Daytime Emmy Awards. |
| June 29 | On CBS, Family Feud with Ray Combs becomes the hour-long Family Feud Challenge. |
| July 16 | The hit Nickelodeon favorite Rugrats begins in Malaysia on TV3. |
| August 7 | After Growing Pains actress Tracey Gold loses a massive amount of weight due to anorexia nervosa, she is placed in hospital care. As a result, she is written out of most of the ABC sitcom's final episodes. |
| August 15 | Nickelodeon began a Saturday night programming block called SNICK. |
| September 2 | TBS airs World Championship Wrestling's Clash of the Champions XX from the Center Stage Theater in Atlanta. The event was not only the 20th time WCW held a Clash of the Champions show but also marked the 20th anniversary of professional wrestling being shown on TBS as Mid-Atlantic Wrestling in 1972. It also was the final wrestling TV appearance for André the Giant, who died several months later. |
| September 4 | Scared Silent: Ending and Exposing Child Abuse, a one-hour live special hosted by Oprah Winfrey, is simulcast on CBS and NBC. Two nights later, the special is rebroadcast on ABC. |
| September 5 | ' premieres on Fox Kids. |
| September 8 | NY1, a 24-hour news channel dedicated to New York City, launches. |
| September 12 | NBC is the first network to cancel all their Saturday morning cartoons in favor of four shows, Saved By The Bell, California Dreams, NBA Inside Stuff, and Name Your Adventure under the TNBC banner. A weekend version of Today, which debuted on August 1, is also added. Animated programming would not return to NBC until 2006. |
| September 21 | Square One TV begins its fifth and final season on PBS. |
| September 24 | The Sci-Fi Channel launches with a broadcast of Star Wars. |
| September 27 | Marlon Wayans and Alexandra Wentworth join the cast of the Fox sketch comedy show In Living Color. Wayans only joins the cast for 13 episodes, but Wentworth stays full-time for both this and the next season. |
| October 1 | The Turner Broadcasting System's Cartoon Network goes on the air. The Merrie Melodies short, Rhapsody Rabbit, was the very first cartoon to be broadcast on the network. |
| October 3 | Sinéad O'Connor causes controversy when she rips up a picture of Pope John Paul II on NBC's Saturday Night Live. |
| October 10 | Michael Jackson's concert ' airs on HBO. |
| October 17 | Kristy McNichol's last episode of Empty Nest, entitled The Boomerang Affair, is broadcast on NBC. |
| October 31 | The pilot episode for X-Men airs on Fox Kids. |
| November 1 | Texas billionaire Ross Perot acquires blocks of TV time for his presidential campaign. |
| November 18 | The Seinfeld episode "The Contest" is broadcast on NBC. |
| November 27 | The TV movie is broadcast by NBC. |
| December 1 | On CBS, The Young and the Restless broadcasts its 5,000th episode. In celebration of this, a Y&R-themed Showcase is presented on The Price is Right, which also airs on CBS. |
Television programs
Debuts
Returning this year
Ending this year
Entering syndication this year
A list of programs that have accumulated enough episodes or seasons to be eligible for off-network syndication and/or basic cable runs.! Show || Seasons ||
Changes of network affiliation
The following shows aired new episodes on a different network than previous first-run episodes:| Show | Moved From | Moved To |
| Monday Night Baseball | ABC | ESPN |
| Hi Honey, I'm Home! | ABC | Nick at Nite |
| Davis Rules | ABC | CBS |
| In the Heat of the Night | NBC | CBS |
| Matlock | NBC | ABC |
| Tiny Toon Adventures | Syndication | Fox Kids |
| The Ben Stiller Show | MTV | Fox |