The current television season has been widely classified as the worst since television began. Which would make this just the same as every other season since television began.
Have there been a lot of bad shows and bad moments? Absolutely.But, at the same time, there have been a lot of good shows. Any year that features such fine programs as "Felicity" and "Sports Night," not to mention big-time network coverage of the Runnin' Utes and the Jazz, can't be all bad.
What follows are selected highlights and lowlights from the year in television:
HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT: The year's most-hyped event, the series finale of "Seinfeld," drew huge ratings and created an enormous amount of disappointment.
It was self-serving, defensive, unfunny, redundant and boring, leaving a bad taste in the mouths of fans all over the country.
THURSDAY-NIGHT ROULETTE: The departure of "Seinfeld" created the TV industry's new favorite guessing game for the first 4 1/2 months of the year -- "What show will get the 'Seinfeld' time slot?"
And the winner was -- "Frasier," which failed to come close to "Seinfeld's" ratings and is suffering through its worst season creatively since it debuted in 1993.
FAT HIT, THIN STAR: Fox's "Ally McBeal" became both a hit and a cultural phenomenon in 1998, prompting discussions of everything from neo-feminism to skirt length.
Star Calista Flockhart became the subject of unwanted rumors about eating disorders (rumors she vigorously denied).
ON TO THE NETWORK: Longtime KSL-Ch. 5 sportscaster Craig Bolerjack finally achieved his life's desire and won a job doing college and (occasional) pro football games for CBS.
He also used the opportunity to sell himself as a shill, hawking products in innumerable local television and radio advertisements.
RIESEN DROPPED AGAIN: Longtime local anchorman Phil Riesen was released by KUTV-Ch. 2, some six years after KTVX-Ch. 4 decided to not renew his contract.
Riesen went on to do radio news and seemingly every commercial endorsement that came his way.
"NYPD" SWITCH: Amid considerable ballyhoo, Jimmy Smits exited "NYPD Blue" and his character, Bobby Simone, was killed off.
His replacement, former child star Rick Schroder, suffered the slings and arrows of skepticism when his casting was announced. But he silenced his critics by turning in fine performances -- and the show's ratings rose after his arrival.
NEW STATIONS: After a bit of convoluted business dealing, Utah got a pair of new commercial television stations. Well, one new station and one changed station.
The former KOOG-Ch. 30 briefly became KUPX-Ch. 30. But the station's owners, Paxson Communications, worked a trade with the WB-affiliated ACME Television, turning it into KUWB-Ch. 30.
And giving the fledgling -- but promising -- WB network a secure home in Utah.
Meanwhile, KUPX moved to Ch. 16 (a license that had been held by the ACME people.) At the end of August, it was the home to the newly launched PAX TV network.
PAXING IT IN: That new PAX TV network, meanwhile, launched with almost entirely old programming. (The alleged seventh broadcast network is attempting to build on reruns of "Touched by an Angel" and "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.")
To date, PAX is falling short of its extremely conservative goal of averaging a 1 rating.
DR. QUINN, CANCELED WOMAN: The largest save-our-show campaign in years sprang to life when CBS swung the ax on "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman."
However, the network cited declining ratings and less-than-desirable demographics and stuck to its guns, sending the good doctor into permanent rerun-land on PAX TV.
REBRANDING THE FAMILY: Fox expanded its cable empire by buying the former Family Channel and scrapping just about all of its schedule. The new Fox Family Channel launched in the fall, targeting urban families.
Oddly enough, the only remnant of the old Family Channel on the new Fox Family Channel is televangelist Pat Robertson and his "700 Club," wedged in among the kiddie shows.
QUALITY TO CABLE: Not only is the broadcast networks' edge in ratings declining, but so is their edge in quality. Increasingly, cable is turning out first-rate, first-run programs -- Lifetime alone has a pair of sitcoms ("Maggie" and "Oh Baby") and a drama ("Any Day Now") that stack up favorably against their broadcast cousins.
STERN BOMBS: The self-proclaimed King of All Media, Howard Stern, brought his alleged talents to broadcast television with the premiere of "The Howard Stern Radio Show," syndicated by the CBS-owned television stations.
Stern vowed he would kick "Saturday Night Live's" you-know-what, but instead found himself being stomped by the long-running NBC show. His ratings quickly declined from mediocre to bad and stations began dropping the show because of its crude content.
Happily, Utah's CBS-owned station -- KUTV-Ch. 2 -- had the good sense and good taste to refuse to carry Stern from the get-go.
FOOTBALL FOLLIES: In the year's biggest sports deal, the NFL made literally billions and billions of dollars extorting, er, um, negotiating new deals with broadcast and cable companies. The highlight was CBS wresting the NFC portion of the contract from NBC.
Which, of course, led immediately to NBC sour-graping its way to comments like, "We didn't really want football anyway. Nyah!"
At this writing, both NBC and the Turner cable networks (who lost their portion of the NFL to ESPN) have delayed plans for a rival football league for at least a year. (And don't be surprised if that delay is permanent.)
ANOTHER DEAL: This year's other "big" sports deal saw ESPN and ABC steal the rights to the NHL away from Fox, beginning with the 1999-2000 seasons.
Ho, hum.
FELICITOUS: TV critics, who rarely approach unanimity on anything, came close while anointing the WB's "Felicity" as the best new show of the fall season.
The "Felicity" backlash, of course, began almost immediately. Some pundits compared the character, a college freshman with a crush on a boy, to a stalker.
UTAHNS YACK IT UP: The fall saw the debut of two nationally syndicated talk shows headlined by former Utahns -- "Donny & Marie" and "The Roseanne Show." Predictably, "D&M" is light, bright and no tax on the brain, while "Roseanne" is shrill and whiny.
Neither is doing much in the national ratings. "Roseanne's" ratings are a smidge higher nationally, while in Utah "Donny & Marie" more than double "Roseanne's" numbers.
GAY TV: "Ellen," which grabbed so much media attention in 1997 when both the lead character and the show's star, Ellen DeGeneres, declared their lesbianism, limped off the air amid near-universal disinterest. Strident, unfunny episodes led to a huge drop in the ratings and inevitable cancellation.
In the fall, the new NBC show "Will & Grace" -- which features a gay man and a straight woman -- debuted to overwhelmingly positive reviews and no protests to speak of.
GETTING "MAD": NBC, faced with the loss of "Seinfeld" and football, made a desperate move to retain another of its longtime hits. The network agreed to pay "Mad About You" stars Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt a million bucks an episode -- each -- to do another season.
The deal came just in time for the bottom to drop out of the show's ratings.
(NBC also agreed to pay $13 million an episode for "ER." That show remains No. 1 in the ratings, but its ratings have dropped by about 10 percent this season.)
FIVE-YEAR MISSION ENDS: After nearly five years of uncertainty -- four in syndication, one on cable -- the five-year "Babylon 5" story arc came to an end.
The successor series, "Crusade," debuts in June.
TO THE MOON: The year's best miniseries was on HBO -- Tom Hanks' "From the Earth to the Moon" chronicled the Apollo project.
The series proved just how good television can be.
STELLAR DOCUMENTARY: Meanwhile, over at CNN, the first half of the 24-part, 24-hour documentary series "The Cold War" proved exactly the same thing.
SHORT-LIVED COMEBACKS: A pair of former movie sex kittens, Ann-Margret and Bo Derek, both took a shot at series television this year. And both missed.
Ann-Margret's "Four Corners" on CBS and Derek's "Wind on Water" on NBC each lasted a grand total of two episodes.
LOW-GRADE OLYMPIC FEVER: Amid huge time-zone differences, little drama and bad weather, CBS broadcast the 1998 Winter Olympics from Nagano, Japan.
Despite the fact that the telecasts trounced their competition and became the third-most-watched Olympics in history, the effort was widely deemed a failure because it failed to meet pre-Games ratings expectations.
UNEXPECTED SUCCESS: CBS provided prime -- and almost entirely complimentary -- coverage of the Runnin' Utes' unexpected run through the NCAA men's basketball tournament.
(Although it would have been nice if CBS sportscasters could have mentioned Coach Rick Majerus just once without mentioning his weight.)
However, the final game, in which Kentucky topped Utah, was one of the lower-rated title games in TV history.
REALLY, REALLY BAD: Not that there weren't plenty of truly awful shows on television this year, but choosing the absolute worst is actually fairly simple. "The Secret Diaries of Desmond Pfeiffer," a UPN sitcom set behind the scenes at the Lincoln White House, was offensive, stupid and completely unfunny.
UPN quickly canceled it. Not because it was offensive, stupid and completely unfunny, but because no one was watching.
FIRST AND LAST: For the third year in a row, "Touched by an Angel" topped the Deseret News TV Survey, in which readers voted for their favorite show.
And, for the first time in four years, there was a new winner (or is that loser?) on the least-favorite list. "Ellen" replaced the departed "Roseanne."
NETWORK EXPANSION: Both the WB and UPN continued their marches toward scheduling seven nights of programming a week. The WB added a fifth night (Thursdays) and UPN added a fourth and fifth night (Thursday and Friday).
However, while the WB saw ratings rise and became a critical and advertiser darling with shows like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Dawson's Creek," "Felicity" and "Charmed," UPN saw its ratings plummet by more than 40 percent.
TV WHACKS WAC: The 16-team Western Athletic Conference, created in an effort to attract television dollars, ended in failure. Eight schools -- including BYU and Utah -- announced plans to secede and form the Mountain West Conference, which is currently negotiating its own TV contracts.
JAZZED: To the tune of enormous local ratings and outstanding national ratings, the Utah Jazz played its way into the NBA Finals for the second year in a row.
The bad news came when the Jazz lost for the second year in a row to the Chicago Bulls, and local TV viewers were forced to listen to noted Michael Jordan groupies Ahmad Rashad and Isiah Thomas gush over their man on NBC.
CHANGING SPORTSCASTERS IN MIDSTREAM: In the midst of May sweeps, KTVX-Ch. 4 suddenly replaced lead sportscaster Carl Arky (who has since gone on to work for Weber State) with fresh face Justin Farmer.
Farmer soon made a name for himself -- as the overmatched host of "Monday Night Live," the worst excuse for a local TV sports show in Utah.
THEY'RE BACK: Former "Full House" munchkins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen returned to ABC's "T.G.I.F" lineup in the cloying "Two of a Kind."
SPORTS NIGHT: Although critics can't make up their minds if this is a comedy or a drama, there's one word that does describe this new show -- good.
THE WITCH IS BACK: Former "Beverly Hills, 90210" bad girl Shannen Doherty returned to series TV -- playing a witch, of all things -- in "Charmed."
In the year's most disingenuous moment, Doherty and producer Aaron Spelling swore up and down there never really was any trouble at all on the set of "90210."
REACH HIGH, FALL SHORT: NBC, long the home of exploitative women-in-jeopardy TV movies, declared it was going for quality beginning this season.
However, following the flops "Pride & Prejudice" and "The Tempest," can a sequel to "Mother, May I Sleep with Danger" -- starring Tori Spelling -- be far behind?
OPRAH'S TOUGH TIMES: It hasn't been a great year for Oprah Winfrey. Her talk show's ratings dropped, falling behind the utterly icky "Jerry Springer Show." Her most recent made-for-TV movie on ABC, "David & Lisa," bombed. As did her theatrical film, "Beloved."
Ah, well, she still has those 80 bazillion dollars in the bank to console her.
FADING PEACOCK: NBC began the year on top of the ratings -- fat, happy and arrogant.
It ended the year still in first place, but just barely. The network is in disarray with falling ratings, replaced executives and an air of desperation.