January 1 - The U.S. channel package PT East, originally created by the New York, New York, company PrimeTime 24, and used by satellite TV viewers where over-the-air TV is unavailable, changes its ABC station from WKRN-TV (Nashville, Tennessee) to WABC-TV (New York, New York).
DirecTV drops the Trio channel from its lineup. The network loses two-thirds of its 20 million viewers, putting in doubt the future of the NBC Universal channel.
January 5 - The 35th anniversary episode of All My Children airs on ABC. The special episode, which brought back former characters Mark Dalton (Mark LaMura) and Nick Davis (Larry Keith), was also unique in that it was the last appearance of ailing actressRuth Warrick. She died less than two weeks after the episode aired.
February 2 - Paramount Television and UPN announce the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise. Soon after, fan efforts begin in order to save the show, climaxing in a campaign that raises more than $3 million (US) towards funding further production, an offer Paramount ultimately rejects.
February 19 - EastEnders celebrates its twentieth anniversary on the air, airing a special episode in which Dirty Den Watts is killed by his new wife Chrissie. 14.34 million watch, the UK's second highest rated programme of 2005 (the first was an episode of Coronation Street three days later).
March 26 - Nine years after its last new episode and sixteen years since its last regular run, Doctor Who returns to BBC1 for a new season, the twenty-seventh in total since 1963. Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper star. An average 10.81 million viewers, over 40% of the watching audience, tune in, winning its timeslot and making it No. 3 BBC show and No. 7 across all channels for the week. The episode went on to become the UK's 6th highest rated programme of 2005. Within weeks of the broadcast of the first episode, the BBC commissions two further seasons of the series, while at the same time is forced to contend with a public relations issue when another branch of the BBC prematurely announces that Eccleston is leaving the program at the end of the current season.
April 2 - Digital channel BBC Four broadcasts a live re-make of the famous 1953 science-fiction drama The Quatermass Experiment. The production is the first live drama broadcast by the BBC for over twenty years, and draws BBC Four's second highest audience to date, with an average of 482,000 viewers.
April 5 - The North American premiere of the new Doctor Who series occurs on the CBC in Canada, the first channel outside of BBC One in the UK to air the new show.
April 5- Peter Jennings informs viewers of World News Tonight, via a taped segment that he has been diagnosed with lung cancer and is beginning chemotherapy. He dies in August 2005.
April 7 -Selena ¡VIVE! was held on April 7, 2005 at Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas. Selena ¡VIVE! was a tribute concert held in honor of the 10th Anniversary of the Tejano Star, Selena's death which occurred on March 31, 1995.
May 1 - Family Guy returns on FOX after three years off the schedule. This return was brought about after the unexpected popularity of the series' cable reruns and DVD releases.
May 2 - Hunter Tylo returns to The Bold and the Beautiful (arguably the most-watched television series in the world) after her character, Dr. Taylor Forrester, was "killed off" three years ago. The revelation that she was alive shocked many viewers and publications as it had not been hinted by any other sources, print or online.
May 13 - The controversial final episode of Star Trek: Enterprise airs in the United States, bringing to a close an 18-year, uninterrupted run of four consecutive or concurrent Star Trek series dating back to 1987.
July 17 - After forty-one years broadcasting on BBC One, music show Top of the Pops is switched to the less mainstream BBC Two channel due to declining audiences. This is not enough to save it, and it is axed the following year.
July 27 - Neighbours celebrates its twentieth anniversary on air with a special episode featuring video messages from a variety of departed characters.
August 29 and after - Hurricane Katrina strikes the Greater New Orleans area, causing major disruption of the region's television broadcasts. Local television news programs relocate to other cities in order to cover the story, though most are knocked off the air by the storm; some continue to broadcast reports over the Internet.
September 2 - While presenting on the NBC Concert for Hurricane Relief, music producer and rapper Kanye West strayed from his script and addressed what he perceived as the racism of both the government and of the media, stating: "George Bush doesn't care about black people", and called for the media to stop labelling African-American families as "looters" while white families were depicted as "looking for food."
September 8 - Faze TV, a British digital channel aimed at gay men, cancels its launch after failing to secure sufficient funding to deliver "sufficient quality." [1]
October 31 - Sky Three is launched on British digital terrestrial and satellite platforms. On the same day Sky Mix is rebranded as Sky Two. On the same day, Sky Travel ceases transmission on Freeview.
November 1 - ITV4, a digital channel aimed at men, is launched in the UK. It is launched on Sky Digital Channel 120 on November 7.
December 15 - Sir Trevor McDonald makes his final ITN news broadcast after over 25 years. As a tribute, the closing theme tune for the News at Ten Thirty that night is replaced with the News at Ten theme used from 1992 to 1999, McDonald having presented the show during that time.
September 24 - Afterlife premieres on ITV1 in the UK. However, despite being a British series, it had actually had its world premiere some weeks earlier on Australia's ABC network.
December 19 - The U.S. version of Deal or No Deal debuts on NBC as a week-long event. It returned for another week on February 27, 2006 before running a weekly shift that currently runs 3 nights a week.
