Y2K The Movie: NBC Boston Affiliate will air disclaimers, before, during, and after movie.

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...to avoid any chance of a "War of the Worlds"-style panic...

Here's my first link attempt.



-- Cant Say (Chicken@NoWay.com), November 18, 1999

Answers

Link did not work!

http://localpartners.com/boston/news/framer/herald.451.html

-- Cant Say (Chicken@NoWay.com), November 18, 1999.


Grrrr.

http://localpartners.com/boston/news/framer/herald/herald.451.html

-- Cant Say (Chicken@NoWay.com), November 18, 1999.


Oh Diane...please DELETE this whole post.

When I finally got the link right, the Herald came out with today's paper and the link is gone.

-- Cant Say (Chicken@NoWay.com), November 18, 1999.


Do it like so. Replace () with triangle brackets.

(a href = "http://www.yahoo.com")Name of Yahoo Link(/a)

-- John Ainsworth (ainsje00@wfu.edu), November 18, 1999.


OK, here's another attempt for a link to the latest Herald story, which calls the movie a real dud.

Boston Herald 11/18/99

-- Cant Say (Chicken@NoWay.com), November 18, 1999.



That link expired. Try t his.

[Educational porpoises only:]

Utility calamity: The end doesn't come soon enough in NBC's `Y2K' film by Mark A. Perigard

Thursday, November 18, 1999

Just when you think you can't stomach hearing one more thing about Y2K, NBC comes along with ``Y2K'' (airing Sunday at 9 p.m. on WHDH Ch. 7), a disaster movie that plays like every survivalist's fondest dream.

Electricity fails across the world. New Year's Eve celebrants become hysterical in two seconds flat. Medical monitors malfunction. Airplanes spin out of control. Prison gates open. Nuclear reactors go off-line.

This lovely piece of dreck wants to reassure us: Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean the world won't end.

And while many network efforts this season have managed to anger one interest group or another, ``Y2K'' may be the first TV movie to anger utility companies for what is viewed as a two-hour warning about their incompetence.

NBC can't claim to be taken by surprise by the protest. The rough cut came with one disclaimer, stating, in part, ``This program does not suggest or imply that any of these events could actually occur.''

There is, however, no disclaimer for poor taste.

Ken Olin (``thirtysomething'') plays Nick Cromwell, a ``complex systems failure expert,'' whatever that is. He and his crack team, including Joe Morton (``The Astronaut's Wife'') and Lauren Tom (``Friends'') work out of a computerized war room in Seattle that specializes in Y2K disaster simulations.

Despite official assurances, Cromwell believes the world's computer systems are balanced on poor coding that will lead to mayhem when the date flips from 1999 to 2000.

``There are 1.2 trillion lines of potentially lethal software in the world. There are over 30 billion computer chips embedded in everything from coffee machines to cars to jumbo jets to nuclear reactors,'' he frets.

Director Dick Lowry skips from one time zone to the next as zero-hour dawns and various cities across the world suffer all sorts of outages. (FYI: Boston loses all power and its 911 emergency system.) But like CBS' ``Aftershock: Earthquake in New York'' earlier this week, ``Y2K'' takes a provocative premise and finds a silly solution.

``Y2K's'' answer to Y2K? Jumper cables. If Bill Gates lets you down, head out to Jiffy Lube.

Olin walks around for the most of the film looking as if he's got a bad case of gas. His systems failure expert, however, is practically indestructible. He suffers through explosions and massive doses of radiation with only some mussed hair.

At one point, he says, ``If anyone says they know what's going to happen tomorrow, they're lying.''

While this writer can't predict what will happen tomorrow, he can predict what will be happening Sunday night: TVs all over the country will go dark.

No computer glitch there. Viewers will be shutting TVs off in protest of a truly bad flick.

-- Leave the links (to@the.pros), November 18, 1999.


>The War of the Worlds

Today even an alien invasion wouldn't bother the sheeple--they would assume the aliens are friendly.

Now a stock market crash--that would be truly frigtening. :-(

-- cgbg jr (cgbgjr@webtv.net), November 18, 1999.


>The War of the Worlds

Today even an alien invasion wouldn't bother the sheeple--they would assume the aliens are friendly.

Now a stock market crash--that would be truly frightening. :-(

-- cgbg jr (cgbgjr@webtv.net), November 18, 1999.


Believe me, you can't go by what 'Boston' says! The Mayor of Boston wouldn't acknowledge a y2k problem if it jumped up and bit him in the ars.

My husband told me that he read in the paper today that the mayor of Boston has a big year-2000 bash planned for New Years Eve. Runs from Friday at noon till Sunday at noon. Now that is crazy! Hope the man also has some kind of congingency plan for getting all those people safely out of the city.

-- flb (fben4077@yahoo.com), November 18, 1999.


I should really use spell-check more often. Sorry about the type-o's. That would be contingency.

-- flb (fben4077@yahoo.com), November 18, 1999.


There never was any 'war of the worlds' type panic. It is all a delusion.

It never sounded right to me. I went to the library and researched newspapers from Nov 1, 1938. No panics. I found a little story making fun of some unamed farmer in rural New Jersey who called the local authorities. Sounded like some late night bored wire service spin story- no details.

And besides- did you ever listen to the show? Lots of commercials and disclaimers during it.

Won't one person in the media ever do a couple hours of research? There NEVER WAS ANY WAR OF THE WORLDS PANIC. It is the media ascribing false powers to itself.

-- Arachnoid (De@Disputah.com), November 18, 1999.


Smart arsed psuedo intellectuals (like me) are forever overestimating Joe Blow's taste in entertainment. Critics pan the stream of Hollywood no-brainers in clever, witty terms and advise Joe to give them a miss and go see the much more enjoyable foreign language film showing on the little one screener down the road.

And Joe goes and sees the shitty blockbusters anyway, with their wobbly effects, ludicrous premises and contrived plots. And he loves them. And buys the T-shirts. And the hats. And the toys. And the burgers. And the burgers with toys.

Only Joe will decide if this thing is too shit to worry him. Anyone clued enough to be on this forum is too clued to judge.

-- Colin MacDonald (roborogerborg@yahoo.com), November 18, 1999.


Boston will turn and tear itself apart like a rabid wolf chewing on it's own steaming entrails. The entire New England area is possibly the largest bastion of extreme DWGIs in the country. I pity the poor people who have seemingly entrusted their lives to the lies that the Spinmiesters have told and woven. This possibly has happened due to the outrageously large number of IT driven businesses located around the Boston Area. Data General, General Dynamic, Wang, Raytheon, amoung literally thousands of other medium to largish IT based companies surround the Greater Metro- Boston area. Perhaps because so many relie (sp?) on these companies, they are willing to 'swallow' the doubt and spin against the nagging little voices in the head that tell them otherwise. My GI freinds can be counted on one hand, and they are a married couple I work with. He posts here frequently as well. We, against our better judgement will be quietly moving our joint preps away to our fallback location(s) soon. Our own families are wholly incapable of even seeing the danger. Animal man awaits. The predation will begin. God help us all.

-- Dr. Moreau (Where @TheWildThings.Are), November 18, 1999.

Mayor Manino (sp) of Boston says he wants to show all those 'Big City' folks (NY) who have poked fun at Boston for being known as the city who rolls up it's sidewalks at night, that we are in fact a world class first rate city. The man is a total DGI/ DC (don't care) idot! What in the world is he thinking? How about a little responsibility here?

What about the safety of the people first? I just don't understand! Grrrrrr....

-- flb (fben4077@yahoo.com), November 18, 1999.


I donno, if I was in a situation where people were hollering "don't panic," i'd head straight for the nearest exit. So would most people. I think Cory Hamasaki said something to that effect. I'll wager that the cheez-E NBC movie won't provoke panic, but the incessant warnings of "don't panic" on the TV screen _just might_. A little reverse psychology can work wonders on a slumbering populace.

-- coprolith (coprolith@fakemail.com), November 18, 1999.


Folks, let's consider the sources here for just a minute.

The Boston Herald is a newspaper that has a fantastic sports department, fine comics and that tabloid-style veritcal fold format that makes it so easy to read on the subway. Other than that, it's a rag just above the National Enquirer and the journalistic credability level.

However, the Herald does have Channel 7 to look down on in terms of credability. In fact, the Enquirer might have Channel 7 to look down on. That station would air live nude executions if they thought there was somebody somewhere that would watch it, and furthermore they would show the replays every five minutes for three days just in case somebody missed it the first time. those people will work at playing to the lowest common denominator, and if they think there is someone somewhere with a 50 IQ watching their station, then that's how they will treat all their viewers. To them, warning people that "it's only a movie" might be an issue most of the time.

Needless to say, I don't think highly of either the Herald or Channel 7.

-- Paul Neuhardt (neuhardt@ultranet.com), November 18, 1999.


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