Friday, December 31, 1999

No Y2K meltdowns so networks focus on fireworks

     Never have so many spent so much to cover so many fireworks.
     Time and again during the TV networks' coverage of the turn of the century, anchors and correspondents uttered the phrases "not much to report" and "so far so good."
     With no apocalyptic meltdowns to report, the cameras focused instead on fireworks, hour after hour of glittering displays from Sydney to Bangkok to Hong Kong, Bombay, Paris and beyond as the march of the millennium hit midnight around the globe.
     At times it was like watching sportscasters fill during a long rain delay.
     ABC's Peter Jennings tried to out-Jerry Lewis the other networks' hosts of marathon coverage by staying on the air for 24 continuous hours. Often he was so stumped for something new to say that he turned his back to the camera and looked out the studio window over Manhattan's Times Square to let viewers know, once again, that there were hundreds of thousands of revelers gathered there.
     Too many times, anchors tossed it to correspondents in farflung locales only to find the reporters distracted for the moment by, you guessed it, massive fireworks displays.
     One place that wasn't aglow with fireworks was Jerusalem. MSNBC repeatedly checked in with reporter Martin Fletcher stationed on the Mount of Olives there. And repeatedly Fletcher informed viewers that "absolutely nothing is happening here" and that there were no public celebrations planned in that center of three religions.
     OK, back to the fireworks.
     One funny moment came when ABC's Jennings threw it to Barbara Walters, perched somewhere near the Eiffel Tower, where the huge countdown clock had suddenly gone on the fritz after counting down for 1000 days. "They're absolutely beside themselves over this!" Walters wheezed.
     That sacre-bleu moment was the closest thing to a Y2K disaster ABC had found by mid-afternoon.
     A lot of countries seemed to celebrate 2000 by letting masses of people dance strange dances wearing gigantic objects on their heads. Giant puppets were popular. Balloons were, too, rising by the thousands above Tokyo, Shanghai and Seoul. And there were plenty of cameras there to beam the pictures around the world.
     As time wound down toward midnight U.S.A. time, coverage ranged from unctious -- Charlie Gibson saluting his own network, ABC, for linking the world "truly as a global village" -- to surprisingly charming.
     The BBC showed a choir of 2000 children in Ireland singing "Danny Boy." CNN picked up footage of actor Jackie Chan flying in on guidewires at the stroke of midnight in Hong Kong. And there was a stunning shot of a lone man playing a haunting tune on a didgeridoo from the peak of the Sydney Opera House roof at dawn's first light Down Under.
     CNN let "2001: A Space Odyssey" author Arthur C. Clarke remind everyone that we're all celebrating the 21st century a year early. Oh, well.
     And then they cut back to more shots of showering sparks of fireworks exploding over Tonga or Thailand or somewhere.
     TV news at the end of the 20th century did what it does better than any other medium -- it created a lot of excitement about what didn't happen. And it beamed out lots of gorgeous pictures of it not happening all around the world.
  

 
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