Yeltsin, Hostages the Only Ripples in Live TV Coverage

From native dancers in New Zealand ushering in the millennium’s first sunrise to Rio’s sunny beaches filled with revelers, from confetti-covered partyers in Times Square to rain-drenched celebrations in Los Angeles, television panned its lens across continents, oceans and time zones to capture the dawn of a new century.

Beginning in the early morning hours Friday, CNN, soon joined by ABC and PBS, provided the bulk of the live television coverage available in the U.S. to an audience expected to rise to record levels as midnight approached. Other networks and cable channels joined with their own live coverage as the day progressed.

Fears of Y2K-induced blackouts proved groundless, with few glitches reported. Those that surfaced were chalked up to the normal difficulties arising from undertaking any live telecast. The only real disruption in broadcasters’ plans came with the surprise resignation of Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the release of hostages in Afghanistan.

Despite obvious relief as each time zone marked the arrival of 2000, broadcasters generally remained cautious, with several stressing that it would take several days before the impact of potential Y2K bugs could be gauged adequately.

Coordinating hour after hour of worldwide live coverage was a highly complex operation for both networks and cable channels, requiring thousands of split-second decisions. For ABC, which spent the last eight months planning its 24-hour marathon broadcast from Times Square--the most ambitious of the major networks--anchor Peter Jennings was the visible ringmaster.

But his staying power paled compared with the scene in the windowless ABC control room. There, a team of three executive producers, ABC News President David Westin and more than a dozen supporting players, all under the command of executive director Roger Goodman, coordinated a remarkable technological array.

ABC had 80 of its own cameras deployed around the world and access to 450 more from a consortium put together to provide pictures of the historic night. Goodman, overseeing everything from whether to go live to the South Pole to when to take the word “live” off the screen, had the ability to access 500 communication sources at any one time. Twice that many were providing information, all of which he distilled into the single broadcast going out on the air.

CNN was undertaking a similar feat from its Atlanta headquarters, part of its 100-hour broadcast that will stretch through the weekend. And though it complicated all the advance planning, news organizations geared for celebration coverage were energized as they scrambled to react when “real news” surfaced with the Yeltsin resignation.

In fact, the most frenetic period for the all-news networks actually took place before their official marathon millennium coverage was scheduled to begin at 2 a.m. Pacific time. At 1:15 a.m., CNN broke with the news about Yeltsin’s resignation and was shortly followed by fellow all-news operations MSNBC and Fox News Channel. Roughly a half-hour later, the same networks were reporting the story about the deal to release the hostages aboard the Indian Airlines jet in Afghanistan.

CNN scored a coup in those early moments, as correspondent Eileen O’Connor landed the first TV interview with acting Russian President Vladimir Putin.

After those two major stories, however, the next several hours of coverage on ABC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and PBS centered largely on the lack of Y2K glitches while providing spectacular images from events as they rang in the new year. Instead of “computer chaos,” as MSNBC correspondent David Gregory put it, “what we have seen is celebration around the world.”

Univision, the country’s largest Spanish-language network, aired its own round-the-clock coverage with scenes from international millennium celebrations interspersed with a variety show that included the best recipe for a pina colada, a medley performed by opera star Placido Domingo and a quick but memorable phone interview from Atlantic City, N.J., with the vivacious sex symbol known simply as Charo. Upon request, the blond performer trilled her trademark “koochie koochie” in honor of the new millennium. Telemundo, Univision’s only competition, maintained its normal programming schedule during the day, with its millennium retrospective and live party coverage starting in the evening.

In Los Angeles, as Roger Bell, news director at KCBS, put it: “The rain is the big story of the day--the rain no one thought would happen.”

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Elizabeth Jensen reported from New York. Brian Lowry reported from Los Angeles. Also contributing were Times staff writers Greg Braxton, Paul Brownfield, Dana Calvo, Susan King, Steve Linan and Judith Michaelson.