It was wacky. It was wonderful. It was weird. It was full of controversy, passion and tragedy. There were more misses than hits.
In other words, 1997 was just your average year in television.Here's a look back at some of the moments that stood out in the past 12 months of TV viewing:
OUT OF THE CLOSET: The year's most annoying drama took place mostly offscreen - the continuing drama over whether ABC would allow the lead character in the sitcom "Ellen," played by Ellen DeGeneres, to declare her lesbianism. ABC eventually acquiesced, and Ellen's TV coming out was the No. 1 show of the week.
By the fall, however, the ratings for "Ellen" had fallen below where they were a year earlier, and this is expected to be the final season for the sitcom.
SACRED COW? ABC was also the home of the fall's most controversial show - "Nothing Sacred," an hourlong drama about a somewhat unorthodox Catholic priest.
A vocal lobby group, the Catholic League, launched a protest and convinced some advertisers to pull out of the show. But other advertisers moved in, and other Catholic groups and individuals (including a couple of archbishops) came to the show's defense.
Despite the weak numbers, ABC renewed "Nothing Sacred" through the end of the season. Maybe it was just to spite the protestors.
"ER" GOES LIVE: TV's most-watched show opened the fall season with a live episode, which drew lots of attention and a huge audience - but which was not one of the series' better episodes.
The cast and crew actually did the show live twice that night so that viewers in the Eastern, Central and Pacific Time Zones could get the full experience. Of course, those of us in the Mountain Time Zone saw it on tape-delay.
IS IT LIVE, OR IS IT MEMOREX? In September, KSL "We're the home of the Cougars" Ch. 5 opted to air tape-delayed coverage of the Ryder Cup golf tournament rather than live coverage of the BYU-SMU football game. The station did, however, provide tape-delayed coverage of the Cougars and the Mustangs - setting off a storm of protests. (A storm whose winds were whipped up by a rabble-rousing TV critic.)
At least the game didn't turn out to be too exciting - just a narrow overtime victory by the Cougars.
BEST NEW SHOW OF THE YEAR: Fox's "Ally McBeal."
WORST NEW SHOW OF THE YEAR: UPN's "Head Over Heels."
SOCIAL COMMENTARY: Sleazy talk-show host Jerry Springer was hired to do commentary on the NBC-owned station in Chicago. The station's lead anchorwoman quit in protest, and Springer lasted less than a week.
Proving there is sometimes justice in television, the station's news ratings dropped precipitously.
STRANGE BUT TRUE: Geraldo Rivera, on the other hand, actually found redemption. Not only did he wangle a $30 million, 5-year contract out of NBC to remain a mainstay of cable's CNBC, but he's giving up his sleazy daytime talk show to do news reports and specials for the NBC broadcast network itself.
SAD NEWS: The most-covered news event of the year was the death of Princess Diana in a Paris car accident. Cable and broadcast news outfits did saturation coverage, and live late-night broadcasts of the funeral were watched by tens of millions of viewers.
MORE POWER: "Hercules" and "Xena" continued to be among the most popular shows in syndication. The folks at Harvard and Yale were puzzled.
WEARING OUT HER WELCOME: Roseanne proved that it really is possible to outstay one's welcome on television. Her final season on the air turned out to be a disaster, with plummeting ratings and ridiculous scripts.
The resilient Roseanne did, however, shortly thereafter announce that she will be hosting her own daytime talk show beginning in the fall of 1998. Not surprisingly, the native Utahn's show has yet to find an outlet here in Utah.
SEX DOESN'T ALWAYS SELL: Former Playboy centerfold and MTV personality Jenny McCarthy got her own sitcom on NBC. Judging by the ratings, not much of anybody cared.
HE'S NO COMEBACK KID: Former late-night talk show host Arsenio Hall attempted to revive his career with a self-titled ABC sitcom, but it was chased off the air by bad ratings in a number of weeks.
WHAT'S IN A NAME? Westinghouse, the corporate giant that swallowed CBS a couple of years ago, is no more. After selling off most of its industrial divisions and becoming a mainly media entity, the company has renamed itself.
That name? CBS Inc.
BYE-BYE BRYANT: After 15 years as host of NBC's "Today Show" - the longest reign in the history of the venerable old show - Bryant Gumbel stepped down in January.
BYU football fans, still holding a grudge for the derogatory comments Gumbel made about the Cougars during the 1984 national championship series, rejoiced.
Gumbel soon moved to CBS, where he began hosting his own news magazine in the fall. Ratings have not been good. Over at "Today," on the other hand, ratings have only gotten better since Matt Lauer replaced Gumbel.
BYU fans rejoiced again.
BYE-BYE JOAN: Over at ABC's "Good Morning America," co-host Joan Lunden either quit or was forced out (depending on whose version of the story you listen to) after 20 years with that show.
Not much of anybody seemed to notice, because her replacement, Lisa McRee, appears to be pretty much a Lunden clone. Only not as goofy and full of herself.
BREEDING LIKE RABBITS: News magazines were all over the schedules of the Big Three networks. In addition to CBS's "Public Eye with Bryant Gumbel," ABC added a second weekly edition of "20/20" and NBC added a fourth - yes, fourth - edition of "Dateline."
That brought the total to 10 news mags, and ABC has announced plans for an 11th beginning in January.
STRANGE BUT TRUE: Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) went on the Home Shopping Network to sell copies of his CDs. (He wrote the lyrics; others wrote the music and performed.)
BIG NETWORK WAR: NBC held onto first place in the ratings - based largely on its powerhouse Thursday lineup - but the Peacock feathers began to fade as the network's ratings dropped.
ABC, on the other hand, has been in free fall, falling to third place. CBS has edged up into second, but its demographics remain the worst among all the networks (including Fox) with the oldest audience in TV.
On the other hand, combined network viewership has fallen to its lowest level ever, and cable viewing is higher than ever before.
A LITTLE WAR: The WB and UPN continued to battle it out for fifth place in the network wars, struggling mightily as they stole affiliate stations from each other and trying desperately to find a break-out hit - something neither network wannabe has really been able to do yet.
An indication of how far each has to go is that this war - one of TV's most vicious - has taken place almost completely without the attention of the viewing public.
ADVERTISING FOR VIEWERS: ABC's "TV is Good" campaign did half of what it was designed to do - it got people talking about the network and the campaign.
On the other hand, it didn't seem to help ABC's ratings any.
STRANGE BUT TRUE: Televangelist Pat Robertson and the company he controls sold cable's Family Channel to Rupert Murdoch and Fox, home of shows like "Melrose Place" and "Married . . . With Children."
KOOG GETS ANOTHER OWNER: Struggling, underfunded KOOG-Ch. 30 got another new owner this year - but this one finally has some clout. Paxson Communications owns upwards of 60 small stations across the country and announced plans to launch a seventh broadcast network next summer.
(Well, it's only sort of a network. It will be mainly an outlet for off-network reruns, topped by the made-in-Utah duo of "Touched by an Angel" and "Promised Land.")
At least local viewers will have something other than infomercials to watch on Ch. 30.
NEW STATION? As to what will happen to KOOG's current network affiliation, the WB, a group in St. Louis announced plans to launch a new broadcast station - - based in Provo, to serve the Wasatch Front.
By year's end, however, we are still waiting to see if the plans would reach fruition.
STRANGE BUT TRUE: Susan Molinari resigned from Congress to become the co-host of "CBS Saturday Morning" - a job she got despite having no journalistic credentials whatsoever.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS: Fox gave up on its morning program, "Fox After Breakfast," replacing it with "The Vicki Lawrence Show." The new host was quoted as saying, "I can't imagine it should be too terribly hard to raise the ratings."
A month later, she, too, was canceled.
BIG ANNIVERSARY: The Fox network turned 10 this year - a milestone few expected to see when it launched with "The Late Show with Joan Rivers" back in 1987.
Whatever else you say about Fox, there's no disputing the fact that its style has changed the face of television.
COSBY CRISES: It was a rough, sad year for Bill Cosby. First, his son, Ennis, was murdered. Then, a young woman claiming to be Cosby's illegitimate daughter tried to extort million of dollars from him.
Still, the TV star's sitcom "Cosby" continues to do well on Mondays. And, after a pair of highly rated special, CBS announced that "Kids Say the Darnedest Things" - hosted by Bill Cosby - will join its regular Friday lineup in January.
STRANGE BUT TRUE: Keith Olbermann quit as co-host of ESPN's "SportsCenter," largely because he doesn't drive and didn't like the trip from New York City to ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn.
MASS EXODUS: Three of the four local stations who do news (Channels 2, 4 and 5) switched news directors this year - an unprecedented change in leadership.
Gee, was it something I said?
THE RATING GAME: The broadcast networks and most cable station adopted an age-based content rating system this year - a system that seemed to please neither those calling for ratings nor those who called such efforts censorship.
A few months later, even more letters were added to the system, giving viewers something that might look like this: TV-14 DSL. (NBC, however, refused to add the additional letters.)
By year's end it appears that the only people who really care about all of this are members of Congress, certain vocal lobby groups and TV programmers and producers. Research shows that most people are ignoring the ratings.
READY FOR PRIME TIME: Former "Saturday Night Live" star Dan Aykroyd returned to weekly TV in - surprise! - a sitcom. And - surprise again! - Aykroyd plays a minister in the family oriented "Soul Man."
LISTED: NBC aired the Oscar-winning film "Schindler's List" without commercial interruption and with minimal edits. It attracted huge ratings - with the Salt Lake TV market being one of the highest in the nation.
CRASS GOODBYE: After more than 250 episodes and 11 years, "Married . . . With Children" finally bit the dust.
THE ANSWER IS OUT THERE: "The X-Files" continued to increase in popularity, despite the fact that it continued to decline in quality.
One possible explanation - aliens may be influencing the viewers' minds through TV.
LATE NIGHT SKIRMISHES: "Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher" moves from cable's Comedy Central to the post-"Nightline" slot on ABC (except in Utah, where it is delayed until the middle of the night). It is an immediate success in the ratings, doing well against "Tonight" and the "Late Show."
Two new late-night talk shows were thrown into the fray this year, "The Keenen Ivory Wayans Show" and "Vibe," which started out with Chris Spencer as the host but soon switched to Sinbad. Neither show makes much headway in the ratings, and both are in danger of falling by the wayside.
MARV'S BIZZARE WORLD: Sportscaster Marv Albert was accused of sexually assaulting (and biting) a woman of his acquaintance. He denied the charges; his bosses at NBC backed him up, and Albert came to Utah to broadcast the NBA Finals.
When Albert's trial began, various sordid details of his sex life - stuff that would make the average person puke - come out. He suddenly pleads guilty to a lesser charge. NBC fires him.
A couple of months later, the confessed criminal does a round of TV interviews and denies his guilt.
SPEAKING OF THE NBA FINALS: Despite the networks' bias against small-market teams (like the Jazz), the Utah-Chicago NBA Finals series turns out to be the second-most-watched ever.
ANOTHER SEX SCANDAL: And speaking of tawdry sex scandals, none was more tawdry than the one involving "Monday Night Football' analyst Frank Gifford, who was caught fooling around with a woman other than his wife, talk-show host Kathie Lee Gifford.
It might not have made such big headlines were it not for the fact that Kathie Lee has boasted for years about her perfect life and perfect marriage.
Kathie Lee has not referred on-air to Frank as the "human love machine" for several months now.
ANOTHER TRIAL VERDICT: It couldn't match the suspense (or the audience) of the criminal trial, but millions of viewers tuned in to hear the verdict in the civil trial against O.J. Simpson. (It went against O.J.)
And it was downright weird to see the network try to juggle their coverage of the verdict and President Clinton's State of the Union address, which came at the same time.
HANGING IN THERE: The big news last summer from ABC Entertainment President Jamie Tarses was that she hadn't been fired. Yet.
Given ABC's slide in the ratings, rumors persist that Tarses won't last long.