For Once, TV Goes Global

Take that, Paris and London.

Said NBC’s Tom Brokaw above the din: “We’ve got a minute and 10 to go.” As the roar rose in Times Square, down came the ball into the jaws of pandemonium, a blast of U.S. history captured live on ABC, NBC and the all-news channels.

And elsewhere?

It took the turn of a century for this nation’s television to fully acknowledge the world beyond U.S. borders.

Friday was that fleeting instant when the news lens widened panoramically to embrace the planet, when our usually myopic TV finally lit up like an electronic globe as 1999 ended across the planet in stages, from Somalia, the South Pacific and Newfoundland to Orange County. It was really something seeing “various parts of the world being cued up,” Diane Sawyer noted on ABC hours before the arrival of the 21st century.

Really, really something, a taste of the television that could be--one using its glorious technology to build cultural bridges and elevate awareness of distant peoples--instead of the one we have.

Eyes inward, foreign news coverage and overseas staffs shrinking, U.S. television stays close to home except when covering violence and disasters, global-minded CNN being the only true exception to this raging ethnocentrism that nourishes our dangerous ignorance of the universe.

That’s why Friday’s multi-network monitoring was so exhilarating, its morning-to-midnight Rolodex of nations recalling that old Coke commercial with peoples of the world singing joyously on a mountaintop. This was not just another feel good sales pitch, however, or a flag-waving parade of nations to open and close an Olympics.

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Although the arrival of a new century did not mend the world’s problems, evidenced by the resignation of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, perhaps the TV coverage made us a bit smarter about each other.

Early on, it was hard turning from PBS, the refreshing purity and sheer beauty of its coverage--in partnership with the BBC and other international broadcasters--standing out from the pontificating heads on other networks.

“Live, from Bombay, India,” someone said. Whether that or singers and dancers in Sri Lanka or Beethoven in Germany, it was all a mountaintop, miles and miles above earthly Y2K worries about blackouts, ATMs and other glitches.

There was wonderful stuff from Venezuela, its devastation from recent floods temporarily eclipsed by the jubilant music of the moment, even though the nation mounted no official celebration.

And on and on it went, magically, from Spanish flamenco dancers to a string quintet in Budapest, Hungary, bringing to mind how differently this celebration of the new century would have played out had the Cold War not ended and the Berlin Wall and other political barriers not faded into oblivion.

Suddenly it was on to Norway, and Prague, Czech Republic, where a violinist stood on a balcony and played a medley from “Fiddler on the Roof.” Then it was Poland, then Sweden, then Amsterdam, where a band was singing John Lennon’s “Imagine,” which could be the new century’s anthem.

A Berlin light show was memorable, as was the ailing pope delivering his message to the multitudes from his balcony in Vatican City.

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In Paris for ABC was Barbara Walters, and just like that, it seemed, she was counting the seconds to midnight (3 p.m. here) and a fireworks spectacle at the Eiffel Tower so brilliant and dazzling--”Here we go, 20,000 lights!”--that the city’s most famous landmark for the moment seemed to be the center of the universe.

An hour later, however, when it was the United Kingdom’s turn, your pulse bonged along with Big Ben as the darkness above London went ablaze as if strung with Christmas lights.

“Oh, wow!” said someone on the Fox News Channel in response to the 40,000 fireworks that lighted the skies and a 450-foot Ferris wheel. There was nothing more to say, and on CNN, appropriately, tongues were tied, allowing viewers to gawk and hear the celebration instead of reporters’ voices.

Meanwhile, NBC was checking in on progress at Times Square, where the drum roll was building toward a thundering midnight climax. Five hours earlier, MSNBC’s Brian Williams had announced that “201 nations have already entered the year 2000, and we have 36 to go.” Many had been on TV during this historic Friday.

Most will earn no return visit, though, unless they go up in flames.