1997 in American Television - Events

Events

Date Event
January 1 The U.S. television networks adopt ratings systems for their programming, similar to those used for motion pictures.
WWOR-TV's EMI Service is officially discontinued, re-uplinked into a local version a month later.
The Emergency Broadcast System is replaced by the Emergency Alert System.
January 3 NBC's The Today Show Bryant Gumbel signs off for the last time.
January 12 Animated series King of the Hill premieres.
January 22 All of the New World Communications television stations are acquired by Fox Television Stations.
January 26 Fox marks its first Super Bowl telecast, making it one of the big four Super Bowl networks to be broadcast in the United States.
February 9 The Simpsons surpasses The Flintstones as the longest-running prime-time animated series in terms of episodes aired.
February 21 On the game show Wheel of Fortune, the old trilon-style puzzle board is used for the last time after 22 years. The following Monday, February 24, a new digital puzzle board debuts, which allows Vanna White to reveal letters with the simple touch of a button.
March 17 Toonami debuts on Cartoon Network.
The first 24-hour Spanish news channel, CNN en Español went live.
April The full-fledged CBS cable network, CBS Eye on People later known as Discovery People, is launched.
April 20 World Wrestling Federation (WWF) Superstar Bret Hart appeared on The Simpsons, the first wrestler to appear on this longest running cartoon.
April 30 The Puppy Episode of the Ellen (TV series) airs, showing for the first time the coming out of a main character.
May 7 Disney Channel launches a preschool morning block, named Playhouse Disney.
June 6 Actress Farrah Fawcett makes a bizarre appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman. Fawcett tells long, rambling stories without a point, fails to understand simple questions, and gets easily distracted by things like blinking lights on the set.
June 21 ABC Sports's Professional Bowlers Tour ends after 36 years.
June 30 KIRO-TV (CBS) and KSTW (UPN) reverted affiliations in Seattle.
July 9 After 4 years of sports programming, NewSport shuts down.
July 15 A tribute episode is aired on Another World in honor of core cast member Victoria Wyndham's 25 years with the program.
August 13 South Park is aired for the first time on Comedy Central.
August 25 Rugrats returns with new regular episodes on Nickelodeon after being canceled in 1994. Note: four special episodes were aired during the hiatus between cancellation and revival, but are not counted as part of the show's normal run.
September 1 Disney Channel has ended as a 14-year run of subscription television. The channel will continue as free of charge.
September 6 Various networks from the Princess Diana funeral broadcasts 2.7 million viewers at home have been watched this special.
September 13 ABC revamps the whole Saturday morning block, and add more new shows from Disney to become Disney's One Saturday Morning.
September 14 The 49th Primetime Emmy Awards are handed out by CBS.
September 19 After several years of anchoring ABC's successful "TGIF" Friday night situation comedy programming block, Family Matters and Step by Step switch networks to CBS. Both shows, which were in their waning years (and would be canceled in 1998), anchor CBS's new Friday night lineup of family-friendly programming.
October 1 Both channels, PRISM and SportsChannel Philadelphia, ceased broadcasting in Philadelphia.
October 31 Detroit regional sports network PASS Sports was folded.
November 2 A third production of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's version of Cinderella airs on ABC. This version, starring Brandy Norwood and Whitney Houston, is produced by The Walt Disney Company, who made their own version of the story as an animated film in 1950.
November 9 Bret Hart lost his last match in the WWF (now WWE) via submission to Shawn Michaels, however Hart never tapped out; see Montreal Screwjob.
November 28 Beavis And Butthead airs on MTV for the last time until new episodes returned in 2011.
December 23 Trio, a channel devoted to CBC programs, is launched in United States.

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Famous quotes containing the word events:

    “I have no time to read newspapers. If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events which make the news transpire—thinner than the paper on which it is printed—then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “The great events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion.”
    —Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

    “The geometry of landscape and situation seems to create its own systems of time, the sense of a dynamic element which is cinematising the events of the canvas, translating a posture or ceremony into dynamic terms. The greatest movie of the 20th century is the Mona Lisa, just as the greatest novel is Gray’s Anatomy.”
    —J.G. (James Graham)