20 April – The scheduled opening night of
BBC Two, the UK's third television channel, is disrupted by power cuts in London, and all that can be screened is announcer
Gerald Priestland delivering apologies from
Alexandra Palace.[5][6] The existing
BBC TV channel is renamed
BBC1.
21 April – Play School is first broadcast on BBC2; the launch schedule, abandoned on the previous day, is shown in full this evening.
26 April – News Review, a summary of the week's news with subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, is broadcast for the first time as part of the launch of BBC2.
29 April – ITV launches in the south west, broadcasting as
Westward Television.
30 April – Television sets manufactured as of this date are required to receive
UHF channels.
May
5 May – The documentary film Seven Up! is broadcast on
ITV, showing the lives of fourteen school children. Subsequent films in the series see them interviewed every seven years.
12 May – ITV London region starts showing the US science fiction horror anthology series The Twilight Zone.
30 May – The 26-part documentary series The Great War covering events in
World War I begins airing on the BBC.
June
No events.
July
July –
Associated Television's series Emergency – Ward 10 shows the first kiss on television between black and white actors, Jamaican-born
Joan Hooley playing surgeon Louise Mahler and John White playing Dr. Giles Farmer.
August
4 August – The first portable televisions go on sale.
22 August – The first Match of the Day airs on
BBC2.[7] The following episodes move to BBC1.
September
18 September – Doctor Who goes to air on
NZBC in New Zealand making it the first country outside of the United Kingdom to broadcast the long-running science fiction series. It will first air in the region of
Christchurch from 18 September to 11 December 1964, then in
Auckland from 30 October 1964 to 29 January 1965,
Wellington from 6 November 1964 to 5 February 1965 and
Dunedin from 5 March to 28 May 1965.
28 September – In the Midlands, BBC One airs the first edition of its local news programme, Midlands Today.[8]
October
9 October – Southern launches a weekly news magazine for the south east called Friday at Ten.
10 October – The
1964 Summer Olympics opening ceremony at
Tokyo,
Japan, with first time of live Olympic telecast program by geostationary communication satellite.
13 October – Danger Man (US: Secret Agent) returns to ITV in longer episodes after being cancelled in 1961.