Just saw on the Drudge Report that the first Nielsens have the NBC Y2K last among the major network programming for the evening. Who could be surprised?

-- Anonymous, November 22, 1999

Answers

I'm just thankful it wasn't a mini-series.

-- Anonymous, November 22, 1999

Well, I enjoyed the movie. Yes, it didn't cover everything. It was pretty tame, but it sure got a lot more information out about Y2k than any other mainstream show I've seen lately. I only wish they'd showed the sewers backing up and water systems drying up though. :) I did think the whole east coast blackout segment was pretty lame. They even made it seem romantic. However, at least it got aired. If it were any more realistic, it probably wouldn't have.

-- Anonymous, November 22, 1999

I love the comment about the miniseries. Can you imagine if they had--they might have had to show all of those labor-room scenes when all the "blackout babies" were born!

-- Anonymous, November 23, 1999

Drew,

After considering one of your earlier posts I thought of a possible explaination to this. Could it be that people generally refuse to believe something threatening unless they can see or feel it? I don't think that this is a good practice, but it seems to be playing out before our eyes... I guess we didn't need all of that PR after all.

-- Anonymous, November 23, 1999

Reporter,

Yes, I think that's generally correct. If we didn't have the National Weather Service, satellites, etc, people probably wouldn't have evacuated the number of people we did prior to Hurricane Floyd.

There are other factors at work, of course; for instance, in bad times, people have a hard time believing good times are nearby; & vice-versa for bad times. In 1978, for instance, Business Week ran its famous "The Death of Equities" cover story, because stocks had gone essentially nowhere for more than a decade. Anyone who said "Dow 10,000 by 1999" at that point would have been regarded as a head case. Similarly, anyone in 1929 who said "A 90 percent drop is coming in stocks in the next three years" would have been sent to the funny farm. We're in a boom time now, so people are highly disinclined to listen to negative forecasts.

Of course, few people understand technology, and what they do know seems awful "gee whiz" to them, so they just think "those smart tech folks" will "fix it." Frankly, most public Y2K optimism is really nothing more than basic Y2K denial: the public has never actually learned what Y2K is all about and gone beyond the initial denial/ ignorance stage.

And in addition there's been the concentrated PR campaigns, the lack of much in-depth Y2K reporting, the fact that even experts don't agree on the outcome (making it more confusing than it already is), the covering up of legitimate Y2K problems, and so on. It's a combination of various factors.

-- Anonymous, November 25, 1999

Drew,

Just curious. I note that you posted the above reply on Thanksgiving day. So, was it done before the big dinner (honey, will you get off that computer and help carve the turkey?) OR after dinner? (burp, sigh, think I'll see what's going on at some web sites);-)

-- Anonymous, November 27, 1999

Heck, Gordon, that was three whole days (and two states) ago. I have naturally forgotten already :)

-- Anonymous, November 28, 1999