oh no-- it's Y2K!!!

[Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com>]

Just heard a great actuality from ABC Radio news, via WBZ.  First, kudos to 
whoever put Walter Cronkite back to work-- he may be 80, but he sounds 
great and it's nice to see him reporting news again, even if it's a 
non-story like the dawn of the year 2000 in Vienna (ABC evidently has 
reporters and anchors situated in various cities around the world to give 
us the latest on whether the world ended or not...).

Anyway, so the ABC news anchor is doing the various lead-ins: We go to 
[insert name of city here] where [insert name of reporter] is standing 
by.  The first two go fine.  And then, she gets to Moscow, and the reporter 
utters two words and is cut off by technical difficulties.  The anchor 
covers it very professionally (live radio or live TV means thinking fast!) 
and then says, "We have a Y2K desk where [I forget reporter's name] is 
standing by, so let's go there now and find out if any Y2K problems have 
occurred."  She hands it off and...   dead air.  The Y2K desk is 
silent!!!  At that point, she just gave her name and network and sent it 
back to the affiliates, and who could blame her?   (I had visions of 
engineers frantically screaming at each other as they tried to figure out 
what had gone wrong...)   Well, it'll be interesting to see how our 
technology holds up as all the networks attempt to do the same kind of 
coverage through the evening...  let's wish everyone good luck!!!