The Most Iconic Premiere Date in TV History

In the history of TV news, few dates are more important than September 22. Over the past four decades, this day has played host to the premiere of more iconic shows than any other date in the calendar. Officially the first day of fall in the Northern Hemisphere, September 22 is now also a historic date in the television calendar.

New small-screen series have debuted at different times of the year since the format’s inception, but it just so happens that many of the best TV shows of all time first aired on this date in particular. The mid-1980s saw an uptick in landmark series premiering on this date, as network TV scheduling became more and more uniform.

Even this year, some of 2025’s most anticipated new TV shows are beginning this September. However, with streaming platforms increasingly asserting their dominance over network television in terms of viewing figures, small-screen scheduling patterns have begun to change significantly. The TV calendar is no longer what it was in decades gone by.

As a result, September 22 will likely remain the single most important date in the history of television premieres for the foreseeable future. While its significance as the anniversary of various historic TV pilots is partly accidental, there’s a logical explanation for these apparent coincidences, too.

Lost, The West Wing, Friends, And More All Premiered On September 22 Of Their Respective Years

From the sitcoms Full House and Family Matters in the late 1980s, to the superhero crime drama Gotham in 2014, September 22 has featured at least one notable TV show debut almost every year in the last 40. In fact, the first series of note to premiere on this date was James Garner’s comedy Western, Maverick, way back in 1957.

32 years later, in 1989, the beach-based drama series Baywatch appeared on NBC for the first time, starring Parker Stevenson and Shawn Weatherly alongside David Hasselhoff. The series would run for 11 seasons and 241 episodes in total.

Two of the greatest shows of the 1990s, the sitcom Friends and political drama The West Wing, both premiered today, 31 and 26 years ago, respectively. The following decade, Lost’s legendary pilot episode first aired on this date, a year after Two and a Half Men, and a year before Chris Rock’s biographical sitcom Everybody Hates Chris.

Police-procedural series Criminals Minds, teen mystery drama Veronica Mars, and legal drama The Good Wife are just some of the other noughties small-screen staples to have begun on September 22. If anything, the practice of premiering a show on this date only became more commonplace in the years immediately prior to streaming newfound domination of TV scheduling.

Why So Many Great Shows Premiered On September 22

The reason why so many TV premieres have taken place on September 22 has its origins in the radio era of United States media networks prior to the first TV shows. It was back then that the traditional calendar of broadcasters and advertisers was established when they were primarily based in New York.

More intensive and high-budget original programming would cease in the summer months, during which many in the media industry would leave the city for their vacations. Consequently, September became the start date for new seasons of programming which would typically finish the following May, and the month when debut episodes most commonly aired.

This broadcasting calendar not only aligned with the accounting year of the advertising companies who played a pivotal role in funding first radio and then TV networks. It also matched the social habits of American network TV audiences, who themselves spent most of the summer months outdoors or vacationing, before retiring to the comfort of their living rooms in September.

More specifically, September 22 has likely become an especially common start date for new TV shows down the years because of its significance as the day which marks the change of seasons in North America from summer to fall. It also occurs late in the month, giving production companies and TV networks more time to plan a show’s screen debut.

How Streaming Has Changed Our Perception Of The TV Calendar

Streaming has changed TV in lots of ways, but one of the biggest is our perception of the TV calendar. Since the advent of streaming platforms with seemingly limitless back catalogs of content available on demand, funded primarily by viewer subscription models, TV scheduling is no longer constrained by the timeslots of traditional networks, or the calendars of advertising companies.

In addition, because audiences can often watch entire seasons of a TV show as soon as they drop on a streaming platform, the notion of a premiere or pilot episode now carries far less significance for new shows. Series tend to debut on streaming platforms all year round, with complete disregard for the customary television calendar.

With watching habits altered by the new parameters of the streaming age, the prospective timeline of a show’s success is also very different, with some new series only becoming hits months after their release dates. September 22 might be a singularly important date in TV history, but it’s unlikely to matter as much to the future of the small screen.