Tape delay is a wonderful thing. Especially at New Year's when you absolutely, positively, must start the new year off watching the waterford crystal ball drop live via satellite in New York's Time Sqare at midnight.
Except in Oklahoma.
The local affiliate station insists on carrying the "live via satellite" literally and broadcast the ball dropping in New York at 11 p.m. local time. No one hour delay to make it coincide with our midnight. No explanation that they are carrying it live, which sends you scrambling to check the correct local time. No warning that your kids will forever wonder why we have to celebrate the new year on Eastern Standard Time, instead of in our own time zone.
Which is why my wife still laughs about being so confused as a kid, wondering what the big fuss was at midnight, when it actually became the new year at 11 p.m. -- according to America's Oldest Living Teenager and his "rockin'" tv show.
So, here we sat at 11 p.m., watching the ball drop and seeing our children jump up and down in celebration of the new year.
Whoopee.
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They used to broadcast it on a one-hour tape delay, but this got to be insulting by the 1990s, especially since KOCO couldn't quite seem to get the delay exactly right, and "midnight" might come at 11:58 or 12:02 or whatever. Plus, we all knew it was an hour earlier in New York anyway.
(You should have seen how they used to do the morning shows - the 8AM ET/7AM ET hours of Today and Good Morning America would be broadcast live, and then at 8AM CT, they'd re-run the 8AM ET hour of the show on two-hour tape delay. That was always weird, because the first hour of the show was harder news than the second, but here in OKC, it was backwards. The practice effectively ended when all the shows started putting clocks on the screen, and the illusion was shattered.)
Nowadays I'm actually glad the new year's shows are live - the shows are in HD, and no OKC station has the equipment to record and rebroadcast HD signals. If they don't relay it live from the NBC/ABC/CBS/PBS/FOX/WB signal, they have to rebroadcast it in SD. At least this way I got to see it all in crystal-clear high-definition.
Including Dick Clark, which I'm not so sure was a good thing, but better to know than to guess.
Happy new year, except on your blog, which is set for the Pacific time zone. :-)
Hey Matt,
Thanks for clearing that up.
I'm not complaining mind you, just making an opinionated observation.
Happy 2006 to you and happy OU victory in the Holiday Bowl (let's spike another ball, shall we?).
Now let's all go and watch the Rose Parade, enjoy our 70+ degree weather and keep an eye out for grass fires.
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