Millennium Eve - Celebrate 2000 (RTE 1)
Into The New Millennium (BBC 1 and BBC 2)
No Frontiers (RTE 1, Monday)
News Review Of The Year (RTE 1, Sunday)
It's not often that television seems inappropriate for a grand communal occasion. After all, given its familiarity, ubiquity and core ability to let you see and hear distant events, its owners and operators have sought to make it indispensable to (indeed defining of) grand communal occasions. We remember news, elections, sport, through the treatment given to them by TV. And we will, no doubt, remember television pictures of the global party that saw out the 20th century and ushered in the 21st.
The Eiffel Tower's "ballet of fire", which was, in fairness, a hell of a spectacle to produce with squibs, was probably the most dazzlingly memorable sight on a day of fireworked frenzy. Sydney also produced pyrotechnic spectaculars during what broadcasters routinely but reverentially called "the biggest live broadcast ever made". Maybe it was mere coincidence that the countries which hold the soccer and rugby world cups are the best at fireworks displays too. Maybe not. Anyway, technology allowed TV to follow midnights and dawns around the planet and certainly, this intensified the sense of Earth as a global village.
Somehow, though, it all seemed rather hollow - not loud or vainglorious in the way in which television can be characteristically hollow. But because hugeness and fireworks and orchestrated momentousness and hour-by-hour countdowns (on BBC) and that horrific "this and this and this" technogrovel ad (run at every break on RTE) are so hostile to contemplation and introspection, TV seemed unusually inappropriate for the day that was in it. Emphasising mass and communality, it inevitably diminished aloneness and singularity, even though these qualities were also, indeed, perhaps more so, at the feeling heart of crossing from one measured millennium to the next.
Huge numbers watched huge numbers in huge cities, perhaps hoping to connect to some vibrancy and feel part of the history of it all. But this was not like Nelson Mandela's release or the signing of the Belfast Agreement or David O'Leary's penalty against Romania. All of those were historic or, at least, communally memorable, because they resulted from combinations of forces and events, which might have produced different results. It's true that a nuclear war or a cosmic collision or a plague might have killed us all off before the year 2000. But fundamentally, most people's sense of reaching the 21st century is personal, not communal, and it reflects much about them and their own lives, not just the notional life of a six billion-strong humanity.
The old may have astonished themselves or just felt a quiet satisfaction; the middle-aged were probably made more aware that dusk is on its way; the young perhaps could feel their noon approaching. These, I suspect, were the real motor feelings of people as December 31st, 1999 slipped away. But such an intricate, inter-generational patchwork of sympathies is not really ideal for "the biggest live broadcast ever made".
To be fair to television, it did recognise that there was sadness as well as joy in seeing the hourglass empty. Nobody, at least nobody I saw, was vacuously screaming "let's porty" - not even Americans or Dubliners with DORT accents. Perhaps some Yanks did, but during the long haul of midnight crossing the Atlantic, I fell asleep well before the aptly named Times Square declared a new century in New York City. To have made it past our own midnight was, tellingly, good enough. Ultimately, I suspect, all millennia are local.
Still, mainstream television couldn't really have produced anything very different. Ostensibly the kind of coverage screened by Millennium Eve - Celebrate 2000 (on which Liz Bonnin did very well) and Into The New Millennium was a documentary of humankind celebrating. In many ways it was, but it was difficult not to think that, in essence, it was really a documentary celebration of technology. Again, that's fair enough and although it too often waded through blood, the last century did make wonderful technological advances. But there is always a tension between the human and the technological and often it is the seismically volatile tension of a strong relationship.
In some senses then, the television coverage of the millennium told more truths about television than about anything else. The medium is in the middle of yet another technological revolution - after colour and satellite, we now face digital. Indeed, with TV, it seems that, in general, the technology has raced so far ahead of the content that it is more like the Internet than is usually admitted. Sure, the very existence of both TV and the Net is marvellous and their potential is awesome. But most TV programmes and an even bigger majority of Net sites are drivel.
There is, to be fair, also quality and a small minority of both media are truly excellent. But it would seem that the task for television in this new century - if it really is concerned about humanity - is to raise the general standard of its content. Instead, of course, the risk is that with technology making more channels, not only technically but economically feasible, we will see ever cheaper and even more insidiously propagandising content beamed around the planet.
But who knows? I certainly don't know how television is going to develop in the coming decades and centuries. With the technology becoming cheaper, it may very well replicate the experience of the newspaper industry, which is both immeasurably better and immeasurably worse than it was after its first 50 years or so. But whatever its future, it was the most significant medium of the 20th century and the BBC probably did become the world's greatest cultural institution. Whether or not it can remain so is another matter.
As for RTE - well, it's clear that the station is in some difficulties at present. Almost 40 years old, it has had, like everything of that age, its successes and its failures. It remains central to Irish life but with Irish life increasingly resembling American, British, German, Italian, Australian . . . life, there is less that is readily distinctive for Irish programme makers to aim at or even exploit. But that is the task because the alternative is TV3, which, recognising globalisation, is as distinctively Irish as, say, an Irish Hilton.
In the new trans-national world which is consolidating, perhaps RTE and the rest of the mainstream Irish media need to be clearer about the most significant forces moulding life today. It might be a good start if RTE producers expanded their ranges of pundits and panellists. Yes, of course, a part of the gig is showbiz and tried and trusted performers and all that . . . but there is far greater knowledge and expertise in Ireland today than a look at the RTE schedules would have you believe.
Not that it's always RTE's fault either. Ever since Sean Lemass, as long ago as 1965, told the then four-year-old Telifis Eireann that it was just "an arm of the government", politicians have consistently been able to bully the national broadcaster. And then there's been the often manic internal politics of the place and the resulting climate of partizanship and self-censorship and timidity and cliques and careerism and many other traits at odds with real inclusiveness. But, compared to say, the banks, how badly has RTE behaved?
That's a matter of opinion, of course. But within a society which, in the past few years, yielded glimpses of some its filthiest linen, how could the national broadcasting organisation not have been contaminated or, at any rate, made less effective, in some way? Practically every power in Irish culture was tainted, in greater or lesser measure, by association with a corrupt centre. The better programme makers know it too. Certainly it is a sad matter when RTE lifers and long-termers look back and decide that their Eurovision song contests - though for light entertainment and TV technique, some were splendid - were the station's real highlights (Gay Byrne excepted).
Such codswallop always smacks of the kind of mentality that believes a successful dinner party for the neighbours is more important than a fulfilling home life for the family. Anyway, what to do about RTE? Well, in spite of (or perhaps "to spite") the Government, it ought to be granted a licence-fee increase, though means-tested, of course. The idea of thousands of thirty-something punters in houses worth from £200,000 to more than £1 million, complaining about paying, say, £30 extra a year (to bring the colour licence fee to £100) is pretty sick. It would still work out at less than £2 a week - which is about the price of 12 cigarettes.
But it would have to mean less advertising revenue as a percentage of total income and an absolute ban on companies using some of the most watched programmes as advertising hoardings by raffling freebies for audience members and viewers. The whole charade of public service broadcasting brought to you by private companies is, as I've said, not simply RTE's fault. It suits many who should, in reality, be in the crosshairs of current affairs cameras. And then a wealthy 30-year-old will tell you that s/he wouldn't pay a penny more in licence fee. What sort of society forms these geniuses? And what of that society's media?
Meanwhile, back to programmes. No Frontiers sent presenters Flo McSweeney, Keith Doyle and Christy Kenneally to Australia. Even allowing for some dodgy scripts about "insane adventures" and Doyle licking an ant's bum in search of vitamin C (an extremely insane adventure), this one generally had the right tone. The trick in holiday programmes, it would appear, is not to swamp place with persona. Too much presenter-projecting can be lethal even to big countries such as Oz.
RTE's News Review Of The Year included a section on sports, which is either extremely old-fashioned or very 21st century indeed. Watching Kosovo again reminded you that on the matter of hard news there, RTE did well. When it came to analysis, coverage - as it was on most other channels - RTE was rather less praiseworthy. But footage of an abandoned Serb torture chamber, complete with bed and homemade restraints, was thoroughly chilling. It certainly jarred with the weekend's prevailing notion of six billion of us moving along in harmony. I suppose all we can do, as all pre-TV peoples have had to do, is hope. Anyway, jamboree over, it'll be back to basics next week.