A year ago, nobody could have or would have predicted that the biggest thing to hit TV in 1999 would be a game show hosted by Regis Philbin.
Not even the folks at ABC expected "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" to be the hottest thing since the Super Bowl. Which it turned out to be, drawing huge ratings that grew bigger during each of its runs -- one in August and the other in November.Which proved once again that the only thing completely predictable about TV is that's it's unpredictable.
Here's a look at some of the other highlights and lowlights of the year in TV:
MORE UNEXPECTED SUCCESS: In January, NBC premiered the touchy-feely drama "Providence," about a thirtysomething woman (a doctor) who returns home and gets caught up in all sorts of family drama. Disdained by many critics (although yours truly loved it), it's the surprise hit of the midseason.
In September, CBS premiered the somewhat less touchy-feely drama "Judging Amy," about a thirtysomething woman (a lawyer/judge) who returns home and gets caught up in all sorts of family drama. Disdained by many critics (yours truly was skeptical), it's the surprise hit of the 1999-2000 season.
YEAR OF THE DRAMA? Actually, after years of network television being dominated by sitcoms and newsmagazines, dramas made a big comeback in 1999. In addition to the two mentioned above, hits like "Once and Again," "Now and Again" and "Family Law" populated the schedules.
Meanwhile, ratings for sitcoms and newsmagazines declined.
LATE START: The success of "Once and Again" set off one of the year's big scheduling controversies -- ABC decided to leave the show on Tuesdays at 9 p.m. until January, delaying the return of longtime hit "NYPD Blue" until then.
IS YOUNGER BETTER? TV became even more youth-obsessed -- the fall schedule included a slew of shows with teen or twentysomething characters.
The outcome was mixed, however. In addition to a couple of modest successes ("Popular" and "Roswell") there were out-and-out bombs ("Wasteland," "Ryan Caulfield"). The networks are sticking with a few shows ("Freaks and Geeks," "Odd Man Out") despite bad ratings.
LUCKY LUCCI: Speaking of TV awards, "All My Children" star Susan Lucci finally won a best-actress award at the daytime Emmys after 18 previous nominations without a victory.
TRULY SHOCKING: In January, NBC West Coast president Scott Sassa shocked the press and the industry by calling for less sex in prime time. By year's end, there was no particular evidence that his vow had stemmed the tide of bad taste, even on his own network.
EMMY DOUBLE-FEATURE: Producer and writer David E. Kelley pulled off an unprecedented feat at the 1999 prime-time Emmy awards -- his show "Ally McBeal" was named best comedy and his other show, "The Practice," won the award as the year's top dramatic series.
RE-ANIMATED: It wasn't such a great year for animation in prime time. Fox hit paydirt (both quality and ratings) with "Futurama," but both "The PJs" and "Family Guy" were bad shows that ended up on hiatus due to bad ratings.
Same for the WB's "Mission Hill" and UPN's "Home Movies." And, while the much-anticipated "Dilbert" on UPN is still on the air, both the ratings and the quality have been disappointing.
Not that network programmers are giving up. Fox, the WB, UPN and even NBC all have new animated series in the works.
LATE-NIGHT: Longtime late-night host Tom Snyder retired, leaving an opening on CBS's "Late Late Show" that was filled by Craig Kilborn. He quit Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" to take the gig.
The cable channel then turned to Jon Stewart, who was, at one point, under contract to David Letterman's World Wide Pants productions -- and thought to be the heir apparent to Snyder if not Letterman himself -- to host "The Daily Show."
JUST TACTICS? The, ahem, rather mercurial Kate Mulgrew told TV critics she wanted to quit "Star Trek: Voyager" and have her character killed off. She insisted it wasn't a contract-negotiation ploy.
She quickly backtracked, got a pay raise and extended her contract for two seasons.
Speaking of "Star Trek," the franchise's third series, "Deep Space Nine," signed off after seven seasons, leaving only "Voyager" -- and continuing speculation about what another "Trek" series might look like.
LEAVING "HOME": After seven seasons on the air, one-time ratings champ "Home Improvement" called it quits.
ABC wanted Tim Allen to do another season and offered him a reported $5 million per episode to do it, but Allen and co-star Patricia Richardson decided the time had come to retire. (And, in terms of quality, it was at least a season too late for the show to go out on top of its game.)
At least it didn't suffer the fate of NBC's "Mad About You," a show whose quality had declined so far that ratings evaporated before it went off the air.
NEWSMAGAZINE NEWS: This turned out to be a bad year for prime-time newsmagazines -- overall viewership declined sharply.
However, CBS finally managed to launch "60 Minutes II" -- and, by year's end, it had become the second-most-watch program of its type on TV, trailing only the original "60 Minutes."
BIG COMEBACK: Norm Macdonald, fired from his gig as the anchor of the "Weekend Update" segments on "Saturday Night Live," got the last laugh when his ABC sitcom, "Norm," turned out to be a success in the ratings.
(This despite its being a rather lame, offensive little show.)
COLUMBINE AFTERMATH: There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the entertainment industry in the wake of the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, and the tragedy affected TV content -- at least for a brief time.
The WB delayed two episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" -- one because its content slightly echoed Columbine, the other because of a violent confrontation (albeit with a demon) at a high-school graduation. CBS never aired an episode of the made-in-Utah series "Promised Land" (since canceled) because it involved a shooting at a Colorado high school.
And CBS temporarily shelved a new series, "Falcone," because of its violent content. However, a few weeks later the network ordered the show as a midseason replacement series.
LACK OF COLOR: One of the year's major controversies involved the lack of Hispanic and African-American characters on prime-time network shows. The new fall season, particularly, was largely devoid of people of color.
There was hyperbole on both sides, with the NAACP -- which had a point -- overstating its case and threatening boycotts, and the networks giving some rather disingenuous answers. TV programmers and producers, however, promised to do better.
NO MORE "MELROSE": After seven seasons of lying, cheating, back-stabbing, sleeping around and general nonsense, Fox finally canceled the increasingly ridiculous prime-time soap "Melrose Place."
Viewers looking for that sort of programming were forced to tune in news coverage of our nation's capital.
CLOONEY BAILS: When George Clooney left TV's top-rated show, "ER," in February, the series seemed at least a little bit troubled. Ratings were off and quality was down.
But the new season brought a bunch of new characters, renewed vigor in terms of the writing and ratings that were actually higher than they were a year earlier when Clooney was still in the cast.
NOT SCANDAL-OBSESSED: In February, Salt Lake City hosted its first major winter sporting event since the Olympic bribery scandal broke -- the U.S. Figure Skating Championships -- and ABC/ESPN's coverage was surprisingly positive.
Oh, they mentioned the scandal as a news story, but they did not obsess over it during the skating coverage.
MEGA-MERGER: A rebounding CBS was at the center of this year's big TV business news -- the network will be merged into the Viacom empire, making CBS a partner with everything from Paramount to MTV to Nickelodeon.
LEWINSKY MANIA: One of the year's highest-rated -- and most revolting -- TV programs was Barbara Walters' interview with Monica Lewinsky. The woman behind the White House scandal got to try to rehabilitate herself, with help from the ever-smarmy Walters.
NEW LEAGUE, NEW TV DEAL: The advent of the new Mountain West Conference (which includes Utah and BYU) meant a few TV changes. Like the old WAC, the MWC has TV contracts with ESPN and ABC.
The biggest difference came in broadcast syndication, as ESPN-plus began airing a package of games on local stations in each of the league's cities. And that meant that some BYU games, which once would have aired on KSL-Ch. 5, ended up on KJZZ-Ch. 14.
KSL fought back, however, morphing its Blue and White Network into SportsWest and signing deals with all the MWC schools (except Utah), as well as Utah State and New Mexico State. SportsWest began broadcasting various games involving those teams to the home cities of the teams involved.
NON-"ACTION": Network television continues to push the boundaries of taste. CBS's "Chicago Hope" uses the s-word (unbleeped), and Fox's "Action" is loaded with barely bleeped four-letter words of the R-rated variety, in addition to a high level of sexual content.
The good news is that so few viewers bother to watch "Action" that the show is canceled.
LOCAL TV ON THE SATELLITE: After Congress passes a bill and President Clinton signs it, satellite TV companies are allowed to add local channels to their lineups. In Utah, the Dish Network jumps in immediately and DirecTV plans to join the game in early 2000.
Both systems, however, will require that their customers equip themselves with new and different satellite dishes.
NETWORK RATINGS: With a good deal of help from "Millionaire," the broadcast networks actually manage to reverse a longtime trend and bring their total share of the audience up a bit in late 1999.
ABC and CBS are up a bit, NBC is down a bit, and Fox has had a disastrous 1999-2000 season, its ratings down as much as 20 percent.
WRESTLING ITS WAY BACK: UPN, left for dead after a thoroughly disastrous 1998-99 season, battled its way back somewhat -- largely on the back of professional wrestling. "WWF Smackdown" gave the pseudo-network some of its best ratings in history.
HE'S BACK: Former KSL-Ch. 5, current CBS sports guy Craig Bolerjack made a return to local TV as one of the hosts of KUTV-Ch. 2's reconfigured Sunday-night show "Talkin' Sports."
SITCOM UTAHNS: Former BYU student Kevin Rahm starred in the NBC sitcom "Everything's Relative" in the spring -- but the show's low ratings meant it lasted only six episodes. However, when fall arrived he was co-starring in the NBC sitcom "Jesse."
Ex-University of Utah student Susan Floyd was cast in the lead of the ABC sitcom "Then Came You" -- but the show was yanked off the fall schedule shortly before it was set to to premiere. It's still awaiting a midseason replacement time slot.
BRYANT AND JANE: CBS's latest attempt at competing with "Today" and "Good Morning America" -- "The Early Show" -- debuts in November. Former "Today" anchor Bryant Gumbel is joined by former KSL-Ch. 5 reporter/anchor Jane Clayson. Early ratings results are not encouraging.
PBS TURNS 30: The Public Broadcast Service celebrated its 30th anniversary with a considerably more upbeat outlook than many would have believed just a couple of years ago. Questions about its mission remain, but there's little doubt it will have a future.
ESPN TURNS 20: ESPN celebrated its 20th anniversary in September, which is nothing short of amazing. Has it only been 20 years? It's hard to remember what TV sports were like before ESPN came along.
KSL TURNS 50: KSL-Ch. 5 celebrated its 50th anniversary in June -- and has spent only about 49 of those years battling whatever network it has been affiliated with. (Come on, it's a joke!)
"WORLD" ENDS: After 35 years, NBC pulled the plug on the daytime soap opera "Another World," replacing it with "Passions."
BIG NEWS: Network and cable news services devoted enormous amounts of time, money and effort into covering the abortive attempts to impeach the president of the United States, the war in Yugoslavia and the untimely death of John F. Kennedy Jr.
Arguably the biggest local story of the year was the tornado that hit downtown Salt Lake City -- and, despite a few glitches here and there, all the local stations acquitted themselves rather well.
OVERKILL: By the time the millennium arrives (or, at least, what some believe is the millennium), television had so beaten it to death with specials and reports and lists and so on and so on that it was more than enough to last for at least a thousand years.