Elvis Presley makes his national television debut on the CBS program, Stage Show, the first of six appearances on the series.
January 30
NBC swaps its Cleveland radio and TV stations to Westinghouse Broadcasting in exchange for Westinghouse's own Philadelphia radio and TV stations. The trade was eventually reversed in 1965.
U.S. Senator Estes Kefauver holds congressional hearings on the rising rates of juvenile crime and publishes an article in Reader's Digest named "Let's Get Rid of Tele-Violence."
The Ampex company demonstrates a videotape recorder at the 1956 NARTB (now National Association of Broadcasters) convention in Chicago. It was the demonstration of the first practical and commercially successful videotape format known as 2" Quadruplex. ABC, NBC, and CBS place orders for the recorders.
NBC introduces a brightly-hued peacock logo to denote the network's first color broadcasts. An animated version of the peacock would air the following year.
CBS uses its AmpexVTR to record the evening news, anchored by Douglas Edwards, which was then fed to the West Coast stations three hours later. This event marks the first use of videotape in network television programming.
CBS televises the first-ever broadcast of the 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer release The Wizard of Oz. An estimated 45 million people viewed the broadcast.
November
Jonathan Winters uses videotape and superimposing techniques to be able to play two characters in the same skit for his NBC television show. This occasion marks the first use of videotape for a network television entertainment program.
^Brooks, Tim; Marsh, Earle (2007). The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network Cable and TV Shows, 1946-Present (9 ed.). New York: Ballantine. p. 174. ISBN978-0-345-49773-4.
^ abWeinstein, David (2004). The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television. Temple University Press. p. 38. ISBN1-59213-499-8.
^Brown, Les (1977). The New York times encyclopedia of television. New York: Times Books. ISBN0-8129-0721-3. OCLC3239713.
^The New York Times Encyclopedia of Television by Les Brown (Times Books, a division of Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Company, Inc., 1977), ISBN0-8129-0721-3, p. 348
^McNeil, Alex, Total Television: The Comprehensive Guide to Programming From 1948 to the Present, Fourth Edition, New York: Penguin Books, 1996, ISBN0 14 02 4916 8, p. 375.
^Brooks, Tim, and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime-Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present (Sixth Edition), New York: Ballantine Books, 1995, ISBN0-345-39736-3, p. 458.
^Woolery, George W. (1985). Children's Television: The First Thirty-Five Years, 1946-1981, Part II: Live, Film, and Tape Series. The Scarecrow Press. pp. 119–120. ISBN0-8108-1651-2.
^Reed, R.M. (2012). The Encyclopedia of Television, Cable, and Video. Springer US. p. 226. ISBN978-1-4684-6521-1.
^McNeil, Alex (1996). Total Television: the Comprehensive Guide to Programming from 1948 to the Present (4th ed.). New York, New York: Penguin Books USA, Inc. p. 939. ISBN0-14-024916-8.
^Brooks, Tim & Marsh, Earle (2007). The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows 1946-Present (9th ed.). New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN978-0-345-49773-4.
^NBC: America's Network Michele Hilmes, Michael Lowell Henry; University of California Press, 2007 - Performing Arts - 362 pages, page 176.
