All assuming the global glitches dont "byte."

Diane

Top networks taking vastly different approaches to welcoming new year
DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer
Tuesday, November 9, 1999

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/1999/11/09/national0057EST0424.DTL

[Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only]

(11-09) 00:57 EST NEW YORK (AP) -- Clinking champagne flutes in a hotel ballroom or a styrofoam cup on the couch: America's top television networks have different styles for celebrating the passage into the year 2000.

ABC News is spending more than $5 million on a 24-hour, telethon-like broadcast anchored by Peter Jennings from Times Square beginning at 5 a.m. EST on Dec. 31. Although top-name entertainers will perform, it's largely a news show.

CBS, meanwhile, has turned its New Year's Eve celebration over to its entertainment division and people like David Letterman and Steven Spielberg.

NBC appears the least interested in Y2K, at least based on time set aside to mark the occasion. The network has largely kept its plans under wraps.

Intense millennial interest isn't anything new at ABC News. The network spent more than $20 million compiling a documentary series, ``The Century,'' which also begat a coffee-table book co-written by Jennings.

``If all we did was cover fireworks and balls dropping, it wouldn't be a very useful enterprise,'' said Tom Yellin, executive producer of ABC's Y2K coverage. ``But if we use it as a chance to take a snapshot of the world at this particular time -- where we've been and where we're going -- then we're journalists again. And we view this as a huge journalistic opportunity.''

Jennings' base is ABC's new studio in Times Square, opened this fall. The network is dispatching people all over the world -- Diane Sawyer to New Zealand, Barbara Walters to Paris, Charles Gibson to London. Competition was fierce for warm-weather assignments.

The network even considered sending a reporter to Antarctica before backing out. ABC will have a camera there, though. Dozens of news reports are being prepared, probably more than will ever make the air. For instance, ABC will examine population trends in both rapidly growing India and shrinking Italy.

Billy Joel, 'N Sync, Aretha Franklin, Sting, Ray Charles, Neil Diamond and others will perform. News' dominance over the celebration has reportedly miffed Dick Clark, whose annual New Year's role on ABC was reduced.

More than half of 506 adults polled by ABC this summer said they were planning to stay home on New Year's Eve, so the network hopes for a big audience.

``I think people before the day will be bored to tears by this,'' Yellin said. ``But on the day, I believe there's going to be a unique feeling in the air and this broadcast will be the place to experience that with the rest of the world.''

ABC is the American member of a group of 60 countries that will produce a 24-hour feed of Y2K stories. The deal ``is really a barrier to entry for the other networks,'' Yellin said, ``because you can't do this yourself.''

News is largely being left out of the party at CBS, except for brief cut-ins or special reports. CBS's news people are instead concentrating on the days leading up to New Year's Eve, like a Dec. 27 collaboration with Time magazine on ``People of the Century.''

CBS plans a Letterman special at 8 p.m. EST New Year's Eve, then a one-hour music special. The network has broadcast rights to the White House-sponsored ``America's Millennium Gala,'' a 2 1/2-hour entertainment special produced by Quincy Jones and including a brief Spielberg film on this century's highlights.

``The Early Show'' will originate from Sydney on Dec. 31, coinciding with midnight there. CBS will also report from Taveuni, an island in Fiji where one side of the island celebrates the new year 24 hours before the other, said Linda Mason, CBS spokeswoman.

ABC and CBS planners say they haven't run into many people from NBC in their preparations, leading them to believe their rival is downplaying the event.

``If they haven't seen us, it's because we're someplace they're not,'' said Beth O'Connell, NBC executive producer for special events.

NBC News has scheduled a two-hour special at 9 p.m. on Dec. 31 that will be ``celebratory in nature,'' O'Connell said. Jay Leno comes on at his usual time after local news, with a show that will be combined with news reports.

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), November 09, 1999

Answers

Funny .... every single night, night after night, they have cloned newscasts...dayin, day out, day in, day out .... down to thelatest wrinkle in the regulatory overisght of the latest fad diet additive. But when it comes to Y2K they're all set to really exercise that independent editorial judgment: no news of course, in the year leading up to the changeover: but one will be celebratory, the other "newsy", etc/

-- SH (squirrel@hunter.com), November 09, 1999.

Read in the Chicago Tribune today that PBS plans to cover the millenium "celebrations" starting in New Zealand and continuing through Alaska until 2am (Alaska time?)

Its showing on the small local WYCC channel 20, not the larger WTTW channel 11.

-- plonk! (realaddress@hotmail.com), November 09, 1999.