25 Years Later

The Epidemic in the American Living Room: AIDS and Television

While 1985’s An Early Frost was the first made-for-TV movie about AIDS, it took several additional years for the medium to further dramatize the epidemic. Oprah Winfrey resumed the dialogue in November 1987 by visiting a small town in West Virginia where a public swimming pool had been closed after an HIV-infected person swam there. (She revisited the town in another segment this past September.) Daytime dramas, not known for boldness, began introducing AIDS story lines.

Other milestones in AIDS programming on television include:

1987: Another World
1988: As the World Turns
1989: Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt
1993: And the Band Played On
1994: TheReal World: San Francisco
1996: "The Violin Lesson" – an episode of Touched by an Angel
1997: Any Mother's Son
1997: In the Gloaming
1997: 413 Hope St.


Source: Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation