The Media is the Millennium
By BARRY DAVIS
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1999
Just in case anyone had any ideas of spending the Great Event of the
Millennium on their own, forget it. Last week the Israel Broadcasting
Authority announced
plans for a huge worldwide broadcasting event encompassing 58 countries
worldwide. In our own small part of the globe, Israel Television's Channel
Three will air a 26-hour
program starting at noon on December 31st 1999 covering millennium events
taking place around the globe from a small island in the Pacific Ocean to
South America as each location prepares for the New Year.
A sculpture in Bethlehem welcoming the millennium. |
Channel One will chip in with coverage of around 40% of the global shindig,
adding local broadcasts from around the domestic scene.
The mega-broadcast will open with shots of all the participating countries
before zooming in on the New Zealand island of Pitt, the first inhabited
place to greet the year 2000. Torches will be lit atop Mount Hakepa and the
obligatory fireworks display will ensue. The first event of the third
millennium will be broadcast from an ocean liner cruising along the
International Date Line.
Meanwhile, further west on mainland New Zealand, the countdown to midnight
will continue and, on the stroke of twelve, the 'Fire in the Sky - 2000'
extravaganza will commence with the Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra and
Polynesian dancers contributing to the festivities.
Elsewhere on the planet, the Philippines will hold a mega cookery show
using giant pans, and a bamboo instrument orchestra will hold a procession
through the streets of Manila. The Indonesians will delve into their past
for their own futuristic event, with their broadcast beamed from
Yogyakarta, the world's largest Buddhist temple in the center of Java. The
Indonesian show will feature an ancient Sanskrit ceremony followed by a
fire, elephant, and dance performance in between the temple's 504 statues
of Buddha.
Recent visitor to these shores, Mercedes Sosa, will star in Argentina's
end-of-year show, while in Britain, Queen Elizabeth will ignite the
country's millennium torch. The event will take place at the specially
built Millennium Dome at Greenwich, after which the national beacons of
Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland will also be lit.
The pyrotechnics will reach a grand finale when, after Big Ben strikes
twelve, a fire path stretching 18 kilometers will be lit along the Thames
River between Greenwich and the Houses of Parliament.
The Americans will ring in the new millennium with a musical extravaganza
featuring a Broadway musical medley sung by some of the greatest singers of
the day, and a performance from New Orleans of A Requiem to the Twentieth
Century by one of the city's top home grown jazz stars, Wynston Marsalis.
Over in Hawaii, there will be an astronomy broadcast looking ahead to what
we might expect from some of the next thousand years.
So, get your TV snacks ready, put out the cat and pull out the phone. It
certainly looks like the second millennium is due to go out with a bang.
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