Making Waves: The Great Year 2000 Survey

Making Waves

The Great Year 2000 Survey

By Gary Stigall, CSTE
Chapter 36 Chairman

"I don't have time," said the Dog. "Stupid questions," said the Cow. "Okay, then I'll answer the year 2000 survey," said the Little Red Hen.

What preparations have you made with your station, company, or home to get you through January 1?

I expected that the 17-year-old Harris remote control system at KFMB would need replacing. Consider the price of RAM in 1983, those 8" floppies, and that cute 1800-baud modem (we actually got around that modem a while ago).

But some of the upgrades would flabbergast you. The Sony LMS needed massive changes, and it's only five years old as I remember. We got the final upgrade materials for this during the third week in December.

The IT guys replaced the newsroom system. I hear most TV stations have done this, or made major upgrades to the operating system.

I took out a seven-year-old intercom system configuration/monitor DOS computer and replaced it with a four-year-old Pentium loaded with good old reliable MS-DOS 6.22. One older graphics workstation will be shutdown for midnight. Another will have to have its date set back to 1972 if we can.

Dare I say that most changes involved some programming sloppiness that involved not core operations, but the way dates looked on a screen or printout.

Generators? We don't need no stinking generators. KFMB-AM radio can run on generators. Radio and TV have huge UPS systems now. But how many people do you know with battery-operated TV's?

Home? Got another pack or two of batteries at Costco. Bought a couple bottles of water. Hid some cash. I'm going to get really sick of Dennison's chili if something bad happens. We have enough camping stuff to make it through an apocalypse. No more than basic Boy Scout-like preparedness.

Where will you be on New Year's Eve?

Home. We have a small party planned with lots of neighborhood kids, and we'll celebrate at midnight Eastern time, just past their bedtime. My wife, who works at Children's Hospital, will be on call, as will I due to my short 10-minute drive to work. I don't believe either of us will be called.

Interestingly, Children's Hospital has plans not only to run the generator (duh?) but to drink their pool if needed, to issue the first paycheck of 2000 manually (on January 14!), and to shutdown all computers before midnight. They have childcare for employees set-up for that night. It's reassuring that they are taking more extreme measures than broadcasters; maybe our priorities ARE in the right places.

What are your best guesses as to what will happen that night?

I'm going out on a limb here--a passion of mine--but I think that Y2K will pass largely without incident in the USA. Unfortunately, other countries may not do as well, using the computers that we sold them many years ago. As with any worldwide event, some aspects will be filled with humorous irony, like major banks crippled for a few days after years of warning. Others tragic, like the violent acts carried out by desparate people. See any related "suicide by cop" article.

Since we're the last heavily-populated time zone in the world, we'll get to watch the drama unfold as though a "wave" of people at the stadium standing up a column at a time. Wouldn't it be wild if the whole phone system failed in Japan? It'd be like one of those cheesy made-for-TV movies, with a made-for-TV hunk falling for a made-for-TV babe, involved in a race against time, singlehandedly making the phone system Y2K compliant in 14 hours, for the good of mankind, or at least the good of citizens in New York City. Music UP...and fade. Thank you all. Great job.

No, I believe babies will sleep. The sun will rise on a new millenium. Department stores will continue clearance sales.

What do you look forward to in the new century?

Fixing genetic diseases before they happen. A political system with access not based on financial support. More leisure time off. An increasing respect of differences in culture and appearance. My children growing in wisdom, or at least cleaning up their room when we ask.

Oh, broadcasting? A stable computer operating system developed with quality, not coercion, as the underlying modus operandi. Digital radio broadcasting. Big solid state memory. COFDM ENG, and even broadcasting. Nano-technology for energy production, locomotion.

Because the networks, radio and TV, barely need local stations now, they will surely bypass local affiliates in favor of satellite and cable distribution. This is not a bad thing--the locals will be too busy providing digital video and music and local news content on demand, which can largely be far more compelling. So maybe you won't be changing cart machine motors in the new millenium, but there will be plenty of computer and RF maintenance for everyone left after the next pandemic.

"Now, who'll help me eat a holiday banquet?" asked the Little Red Hen.