Wikipedia is great for this. I did a search "1997 in television", and it popped up choices for American, English, Canadian, and Japanese TV. Here are the highlights of American TV in '97:
New Shows: King of the Hill (Fox), Daria (MTV), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (WB), Teletubbies (PBS), Stargate SH-1, the View (ABC), South Park (Comedy Central), Ally McBeal (WB).
Popular shows that ended: Beavis & Butthead, Coach, Married....with Children, Roseanne
And I also found a link for the NY Times Bestsellers List Archives:
http://www.hawes.com/pastlist.htm
Not quite as easy, since it breaks it down week-by-week, but you can distill it down pretty easily with a few minutes work.