"Broadcasters brave bug for 25-hour millennium party"greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread |
It looks as if we're going to get complete coverage of New Zealand, Australia and then Japan on December 31st...[snip]
Broadcasters brave bug for 25-hour millennium party
01:44 a.m. Apr 21, 1999 Eastern
SYDNEY, April 21 (Reuters) - Broadcasters around the world plan to defy millennium bug doomsayers to produce a 25-hour international telecast to celebrate the dawn of 2000.
Television executives announced their plans for what they say will be the largest, most ambitious live television event in history at a news conference in Sydney on Wednesday.
Australian Broadcasting Corp, which is helping to co-ordinate the project, said the 2000 Today telecast would start at 1000 GMT on December 31, moving from the Pacific islands and New Zealand round the globe and back to Western Samoa, the last Pacific island to bid farewell to the 20th century.
The project will also test how effectively the globe has tackled the Y2K bug, an old programming practice that allocated only two digits for the date of the year and might cause date-sensitive technology to read 2000 as 1900.
``Everybody's been doing their best to ensure the disaster scenario doesn't happen,'' said Neil Eccles of the British Broadcasting Corp, one of the telecast's executive producers.
More than 40 national broadcasters will take part and the consortium expects more than one billion viewers.
The project was conceived by Zvi Dor-Ner of WGBH Boston, part of the U.S. Public Broadcast Service network. Dor-Ner produced the award-winning People's Century documentary series on the history of the 20th century.
Asked about the Y2K bug threat, Dor-Ner joked, ``In addition we've asked groups who specialise in praying for rain to pray for us, too.''
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
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-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), April 21, 1999
We have a DWGI talk show host here in the burgh, that will be on the air on new years evil. I will have KDKA on to hear his rantings. I hope nothing happens, but I assure you, he will be a hoot. The 50,000 watt blowtorch covers most of the eastern US and Canada a night, so tune in. 1020 AM on your dial. Also on the net if you have real player.
-- SCOTTY (BLehman202@aol.com), April 21, 1999.
Maybe this kind of coverage is the reason for this "holiday" on December 31...http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000jp8
"EU closer to making Dec 31 millennium bug holiday"
-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), April 21, 1999.