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Programmed to party By WALT BELCHER/Tampa Tribune Television Critic Read other Television columns and news
TV rings in the new year with round-the-clock merriment, music and memories.
TAMPA - America will watch the century roll over while basking in the glow of its TV sets.
Millennium, schmillennium.
Forget jetting off to the Pyramids for that 12-hour laser show or trekking to Vegas to catch Babs sing at $1,200 a pop.
Give us a few firecrackers in the driveway, a bottle of cold duck in the fridge and Dick Clark counting down the ball drop from Times Square on television.
A recent ABC News poll found that 68 percent of us see the coming of 2000 as no big deal - just another new year. A similar CNN poll found that 75 percent of Americans will be celebrating at home.
We have to watch television if only to see whether the Y2K computer fears are realized and the screen goes dark.
While the public may be indifferent, the networks, big and small, are going gaga with ``Extra Special, Very Important Programming for This Significant Date in History.''
The major broadcast networks will try to balance news coverage with entertainment, while specialty networks go with gimmicks.
The Cartoon Network, for example, plans a ``Jetsons'' marathon beginning Thursday morning (a peek at the 21st century).
And Nickelodeon's ``Nickellennium,'' which begins one minute past midnight on Friday night and runs for 24 hours without commercials, features thousands of kids from throughout the world talking about their hopes and dreams for the future.
Meanwhile, the bigger players are bringing out their big guns for expanded programming.
ABC, for example, will barely have time to squeeze Dick Clark into its ``ABC 2000'' event - 25 hours of countdown starting at 4:50 a.m. Friday.
Most of ABC's major ``talent'' will be working: Cokie Roberts from Rome; Connie Chung from Las Vegas; Barbara Walters from Paris; Sam Donaldson from Washington; Deborah Roberts from Walt Disney World; Peter Jennings from New York; and others too numerous to list.
YOUR HEAD doesn't swim from all that globe hopping, you can play ``count the hyperboles'' used by TV types while trying to attach meaning to this coverage.
Of course, if you start watching the countdown on Friday afternoon, chances are you'll be bored long before the midnight hour.
As the final hour winds down, ABC plans musical performances by Billy Joel, Aretha Franklin, Sting, Andrea Bocelli, 'N Sync and Barry Manilow.
NBC is relying on its sister cable service, MSNBC, to go with nonstop end-of-century coverage beginning at 4:30 a.m. Friday.
Also on Friday, the ``Today'' show runs an hour longer; NBC's Tom Brokaw anchors the evening news from Times Square; and three hours of prime time are devoted to ``millennium-ending'' coverage.
Jay Leno's traditional live New Year's Eve ``Tonight Show'' will be cut short. After his monologue, Brokaw will take over.
CBS will party with exclusive coverage of the $10 million White House-sponsored ``America's Millennium: A Celebration for the Nation'' from Washington, D.C.
Airing from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., with a break for local news at 11), it features Trisha Yearwood, Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, the cast of ``Stomp,'' an 18-minute film by Steven Spielberg and the Clintons.
It will be preceded by a David Letterman special at 8 p.m. and a musical special at 9.
Fox will show a futuristic movie, ``Star Trek: Generations,'' at 8 p.m. and a news-musical event, ``Ring in the New Millennium With Fox 2000,'' at 11 p.m.
This being the home of ``The X-Files,'' Fox News will include a live report from Roswell, N.M. There will also be reports from London, Paris, Rome, Vegas, Moscow and New York. Brit Hume and Paula Zahn, of Fox News Channel, are anchors. Musical guests include the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Neville Brothers. Fox News Channel will join rivals CNN and MSNBC in marathon global coverage beginning at dawn Friday.
HAS a big project, too. It starts at 4:40 a.m. Friday. Celebrations from around the globe will be featured. PBS is part of the international Millennium Day Broadcast Consortium 2000, in which programmers throughout the world share coverage.
Included could be what producers are calling the first birth of the century.
The Consortium has 70 cameras set up in maternity wards in New Zealand, the first major country to see 2000. Channel flippers may see some of this coverage on ABC, which is a member of MDBC 2000.
CNN, short on star talent and entertainment power, will make up for it with tonnage: 100 hours of coverage beginning at 5 a.m. Friday and running intermittently through Tuesday. Included will be numerous taped historical features on events during the past thousand years.
MTV will cater to its youthful audience with a live party from the network's New York studios beginning at 5 p.m. Friday and running past midnight with a slew of artists such as the Goo Goo Dolls, Blink 182, Bush, Puff Daddy, the Backstreet Boys and Enrique Iglesias.
Before and during the party, MTV counts down the top videos of the year.
It's to be expected that MTV would have a big musical bash, but who would have thought one of longest and biggest musical celebrations would be on Pax TV?
Will Pax's aged audience, more in tune with ``Touched by an Angel'' and ``Diagnosis Murder,'' even know who Big Bad Voodoo Daddy is?
Pax has bought the rights to a 25-hour international rock special that begins at 5 a.m. Friday and also includes Simply Red, Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders, 10,000 Maniacs, Sting, Phil Collins, the Bee Gees, Aerosmith, Chicago, Blondie, Ricky Martin, the Spice Girls and more.
It could be the most exciting programming ever offered on Pax, but will anyone even notice it?
To find the really funky stuff, you'll have to turn to cable on Friday for a cornucopia of stunts.
Here are some examples:
-- The Discovery Channel has fun with Y2K fears by scheduling documentaries on insects and other creepy creatures starting at 7 p.m. New Year's Day under the heading ``Real Millennium Bugs.''
-- Turner Classic Movies has decided that Elvis Presley was the artist of the century and plans a 15-hour film festival tribute to the King beginning at 2 p.m. Friday. On Saturday, TCM offers ``Computers Gone Mad'' day with movies such as ``2001: A Space Odyssey'' and ``Westworld.''
-- TBS is dropping ``The Andy Griffith Show'' after 25 years of reruns, but not before one last run of the 33 best episodes beginning at 6:15 a.m. Friday.
-- The Sci-Fi Network welcomes 2000 with Rod Serling's ``The Twilight Zone.'' A ``Twilight'' marathon begins at 9 p.m. Friday.
-- The Game Show Network offers ``Y2Play.'' Catch the final episodes of such classic game shows as ``Jeopardy!'' ``Double Dare,'' ``Super Password'' and ``Card Sharks.'' Charles Nelson Reilly hosts. It begins at 1 p.m. Friday.
-- The Learning Channel takes on prophecies, apocalyptic visions and futuristic predictions in a series of weird specials beginning at 7 p.m. Friday. At 11 p.m., TLC gets really bizarre with a prophecy special co-hosted by the Rev. Jerry Falwell and psychic debunker James Randi.
-- ``Millennium Mayhem'' is a four-hour marathon of Three Stooges comedies on AMC beginning at midnight. Friday.
-- Comedy Central's ``The Man Show'' looks at highlights of the past 1,000 years at 9:30 p.m. Friday in a show including lots of women jumping on trampolines and flatulent apes.
