[Magdalen] Happy New Year

[Jim Guthrie]

>And I'm not going to make it to Kansas Midnight, and the ball has

My Midwest relatives always counted the ball drop as the start of the New 
year -- which for them was 11 PM.

Back in the Ben Grauer days, NBC ran it live Easter/Central and Mountain, and 
then ran a Kinescope (later a tape) on the Pacific time zone.

One other cultural note -- NPR ran an interview regarding "Auld Lang Syne" on 
ATC yesterday. Not ONCE did she mention the influence of Guy Lombardo and his 
Royal Canadians who turned it from a simple "a" tradition to "THE" New Year's 
tradition. From 1929 into the 1970s, Lombardo made it a mass media icon. It 
should be noted that the blast Lombardo out over Times Square, and then follow 
it with Sinatra singing "New York New York."

When I was running the Zipper, our "tradition" was to go to Times Square and up 
into our office on the second floor of 1 Times Square with champagne and 
goodies -- and celebrate in the middle of it all (we had windows to watch.

The great triumph was 1993, when about a minute before 12, I ran **once** a 
headline reading "NYPD estimates more than half million people freezing asses 
off in Times Square."

Such a roar went up from the crowd that Dick Clark checked his watch and turned 
around to make sure he hadn’t missed anything!

Nowadays, the Zipper of thousands of 40 watt light bulbs has been replaced by an 
electronic/LED version, and is run from some office park near Princeton, NJ --  
along with many other such signs around the country, and all part of the Rupert 
Murdoch empire.

Happy New Year
Jim