I think we should recruit several editors to aid in this process. I agree that the date pages have a lot of work to be done. Even if I were to do it alone, though, and commit to doing 10 of them per day, it would only take me about a month.
As far as sections are concerned, I believe on the Wikipedia date articles, they have an "events" section, then "births," then "deaths." I think we could benefit from something similar. So, if we're going with splitting the articles (brilliant suggestion; never thought of it - maybe I shall indeed open up that debate), on the out-of-universe pages, we'd have any big events (like 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who) in the introduction, then a "Releases" section with all the releases, then a "Births" section, then a "Deaths" section. In the in-universe pages, we might have the most key event or aspect of the day in the introduction, an "Events" section, then "Births" and "Deaths" sections. I think, though, that if we split up the articles, it'd be harder to come up with leads for the real world date articles. Should I open a new discussion in the Panopticon about date pages so we can get onto this new project as soon as possible? I feel like this is getting off the topic of the new homepage.