Fox News Channel's goodbye to the 20th Century was as good as a London Broil on a cold night. Both trustworthy in attitude and celebratory zest, The Fox Report's Shepard Smith was experiencing such visible delectation that his newsman voice melted away, exposing a serious ginger-sling of a Southern-accent by midnight. He even wore a tiara, popular attire in Times Square. Fox News Channel team appeared to be overqualified for the fluffery of New Year's Eve reporting. Fox Television on the other hand, which mingled their 'journalists' with the FNC's people, fell in line with the watery intellect of The Big Three networks' crews. After Mayor Rudy Guiliani dropped that million-dollar crystal ball, Smith turned to his 'straight-man', street-side reporter Rick Levinthal, a reliable correspondent with an actual journalism degree. Levinthal was teamed with a Fox TV 'reporter' who clearly belonged with the 'whooing' crowds under the media platform where he and Levinthal were poised. As airtime was handed to this Fox-TV 'Everyman', he said, "It's just indescribable to be here. There are no words. It's just indescribable." Levinthal, whose metaphorical belt had also loosened after the Millennium hour, retorted with the deliciously obvious, "Well, that's your job, how about giving it a try?" The anchor-palooka laughed and offered. "Okay. It's just surreal." Levinthal replied dryly, "Surreal? Yes, it is that."

Surreal doesn't describe the media's overall failure to connect with humanity with all of its technological capabilities and the eager audiences of folks who stayed safe at home on the dawn of Y2K. Flipping through the local and national programs dedicated to Millennium coverage pushed you from channel to channel until slamming into the undeniably transcendent experience offered by the Public Broadcasting System.

With no more interest in seeing the tops of party hats, tiaras, and '2000' Millennium gag-glasses, no doubt the average viewer was left with no where to go but PBS. Parking your remote on ABC at 11 p.m, you passively expected to see another installment of "Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve", a tradition since 1977 when it debuted with hosts Erik Estrada and Charlene Tilton. ABC replaced Clark's creative Stonehenge with a stream of unconsciousness presentation hosted by Canadian Frankenstein Peter Jennings. Jennings, who was festooned with an invisible hands-free head-set, was encouraged to rise from his anchor desk, situated in the ABC Times Square News Room--otherwise well-described as 'The Cone of Silence". Hard to take the news seriously (including television magazine 20/20, which broadcasts from this picture window studio) when half-nude Calvin Klein and Victoria's Secret billboards slither in the sky behind 'serious' anchors. Harder still because the MTV Times Square studio giggles away with live bands and barely dressed teens twenty-four seven. Even Shephard Smith noticed the go-go girls and partiers at MTV, "They must be awfully cold..."

Real life escaped Jennings, and there seemed to be no NYE moment that Jennings couldn't connect to an interview he'd done. The Six Degrees of Peter Jennings made it impossible to watch ABC, who chose to change his clothes as the hours changed. By midnight, he appeared like Mr. Rogers on ludes. His lack of true smarts was exposed as Jennings winged it, referring to Greenwich, Connecticut when he should've said, Greenwich, England.

ABC's greatest moment was not in broadcasting the pudgy Elton John singing AGAIN, "Candle In The Wind" with Jennings' historical interpretation of the song detailing its meaning to the late Princess Diana. ABC could've had a great moment. Jumping to a tremendous theater in Colorado, where pop legend Neil Diamond blazed the song "America", mistiming the countdown by three seconds. Despite the genuine human emotional hysteria and joy, ABC abruptly cut away before Diamond finished the tune's fanfare, crippling an otherwise terrific moment.

Knowing Dick Clark was safe from sniper marksmen this year and frustration with ABC's goofy reporters, it was time to peruse different programming. The local West-Coast coverage demonstrated how stunningly ill-conceived Los Angeles's Millennium Celebration was. The LA Times produced a special-section detailing party locales and schedules, drawing few to the city's bash, which had the smell of organized ethnic segregation without a central congregation point. Mayor Riordan's Millennium Committee created five-disconnected outdoor 'Millennium Parties' "extravaganzettes", featuring: live music, food vendors, balloons, portable toilets and street performers. A substantial rainfall surprised the city on December 30th and 31st but the committee failed to create a contingency plan for bad weather. $2 million dollars (including vendor donations according to the LA Times) down the drain, leaving Southern Californians with nothing but television.

Luckily, CNN and Headline News who switched between The White House Millennium Gala and helicopter-views of the main international celebrations alleviated Millennium Disgust. CNN and Headline News seemed confident to rely on unpredictable satellite transmissions, delivering the essence of vitality missing from the major network and local channels. One of the most vital moments of America's Millennium came from CNN's coverage of the White House Millennium Gala. The White House event was produced by Hollywood's biggest names (Quincy Jones, Steven Spielberg, George Stevens Jr.) and the courtside Presidential box was bundled by tabloid glitterati (Robert DeNiro, Will Smith, Jack Nicholson, Trishia Yearwood, etc.) giving the Millennium all the reverence of the Golden Globe Awards. The Lincoln Monument was turned into a makeshift stage for performers like U2's Bono, who chose to sing for the President sans The Edge. Bobby McFerrin's rendition of the Star Spangled Banner was part of the effort to prove that America isn't racist anymore. Accompanied by 'street urchin' singers wearing expensive thug sportswear, (didn't their mother's know they were meeting the President?) the production further inflated the sense that ethnic diversity was being marinated before us instead of earnestly presented. President Clinton's leaden speech dangled in the air without hydraulic power for approximately ten minutes before his nose cherried and mottled in the cold forcing him to wrap it up. With merciless drone-speak, The President almost drove a poetic tank over the Millennium countdown moment.

The special item that CNN reported in relation to the White House celebration was outside the confines of executive authority. The pre-Gala coverage outside the Washington Monument showed a rabble of mostly college-aged drunken kids. Some jumped in the Reflecting Pool while waiting for the fireworks and the Gala to begin. But the First Lady thought it would be a good time to put her stamp on history, and match Rudy Guiliani for airtime. She manned the podium and asked for what little entertainment there was to be silenced so she might personally welcome the Americans who were sharing the New Year with the Clintons...when some of the Americans began to chant, "Mon-I-CA! Mon-I-CA!" The CNN correspondent who relayed this seemed unsure if he should be smiling while recounting his eyewitness testimony. Nothing further was made of it during CNN's broadcast.

The gleaming comet of all Millennium coverage, largely unacknowledged was PBS TV's fantastically creative and in-depth program, "Millennium 2000". Literally flying around the globe for over 24 hours, PBS broadcast in-depth presentations of almost every nation's Millennium Celebration. America was certainly shredded into shame for having zero human spirit. The United States' efforts, like a laser-beam meant to reach aliens in Roswell, New Mexico (largely there to promote a web-site and sell-T-shirts) lacked compassion, gratitude, imagination, and generational love.

If you were lucky enough and savvy enough to stick with PBS for the hours before and after the Millennium you would've seen:

-A tribal ceremony, live, from a primitive Rain Forest community.

-Australia's entire extravaganza replete with wall dancing on the steep sides of Sydney's Opera House.

-Aboriginal bonfires, and coastal populations canoeing-out to view the last sunset of the Millennium from the sea...three million people strong.

-Bjork, performing a new-age but crystalline song wearing designer monk garb while druid-like Icelanders carried torches to a central meeting place on the barren rocky shores.

-Phenom ice sculptures in Siberia, hoards of frostbitten revelers generating more warmth than all of Southern California.

-The Great Wall of China, lined for miles with immaculately rehearsed minions dancing with dragon and snake puppets, flags, and fireworks.

-Vienna making an ass out of itself with a gold-lame costumed modern Strauss-alike who rapped at midnight in English about becoming the most famous man in the world.

-Moscow and Alaska seeming equally frigid but burning with excited souls hugging and kissing at midnight.

-Samoa, the last place on earth to hail the New Year, a rat-a-tat ceremony that lacked polish but held the weight of knowing their position in time.

-Mandela returning to his prison cell of 18 years, in a holy ceremony that could hush the world had they seen it.

-Vatican City's mix of forgiveness and controversy as a seriously ill Pope made his best effort to connect with the millions of Catholics, accompanied by a Jumbo-Pope-Tron Screen.

-The complete Yanniesque-Cirque Du Soleil ceremony at the Pyramids of Giza, orchestrated by composer Jean Michael Jarre.

-Bethlehem and the joyous moment of midnight when nothing bad happened and the Messiah failed to show except in the form of thousands of gorgeous doves set loose at the infamous stroke of the Millennium. The world was safe after all.

-Celebrations in the American Heartland, coverage shamefully ignored by US networks, like Grateful Dead-ish band, Phish playing to American Indian Reservation communities with all the heart of a tripping Woodstock.

-In depth coverage of London's massive Millennium Dome party and it's A-List of performers.

-Germany bringing down the Wall again without a whiff of Hitler as Austria's Vienna Boy's Choir traditional concert.

-The Irish bringing the New Year in with folk winded strings, warm booze, and unity. Pretty good for a nation smaller than Texas.

The gorgeous youth and the thankful elders of the entire world laid out their notion of this once in a lifetime moment with the knowledge of it's singular occurrence with nobility, live on the air as it happened thanks to PBS's astoundingly simple and possible use of existing technology. A revolving door of correspondents guiding us from its Washington studio, which looked rather like a Store Of Knowledge retail outlet than a stodgy logo-plastered TV-studio. Reporters sitting in a 'satellite' center took massive amounts of info, translations, and bombardments of colorful footage and presented them in a dizzying breast-feeding of humanity. In between satellite transmissions, PBS took care to interview figures from all sects of culture, politics, finance, history, and entertainment, while tracking PBS's role through time in pre-taped interviews that left you feeling as paused as intended. World traveling Python, Michael Palin shared his wish for the future, while Arthur C. Clarke boasted of his successful futurist predictions and Mr. Rogers resonated with emotion speaking about his cause, the children of the world.

The rest of the world communicated the awesome meaning of people-hood and demonstrated a universal circulation of our collective pulses. Terrorists, fanatics, naysayers, and miscreants, and misinformed commercialized entities...like the insufficiently humbled U.S. went unrewarded. The only sign of apocalypse that flickered was a lack of visible, tangible, humility, which only starved the commercial beast of American media into devouring the last moments of the Millennium with an entertainment blackout.

Who could've imagined that the ultimate weapon against the Y2K Apocalypse would be a remote control?

Copyright © 2000 Vicki Reed All Rights Reserved