Inside RNZ on the night of Y2K

Sunday, 29 December 2024, 5:40 am
Article: RNZ

Serena Solomon
28 December 2024

A concerning glitch occurred just before midnight in the Chatham Islands during RNZ's coverage of the New Year's Eve that ushered in the year 2000.

The Chathams are 45 minutes ahead of mainland New Zealand, which was considered the first industrialised nation to enter 2000 and face the "computer bug" Y2K. We were a test case of what the rest of the world might experience.

Reporter John MacDonald was in the Chathams using a satellite phone for a live cross with presenter Sean Plunket in RNZ's Wellington studios. A beacon of hope was about to be lit for the new millennium and Macdonald was describing the scene.

Then, the line went dead.

"And as we talked to John we lost it," Plunket said through a slight chuckle, nervous or otherwise. "I can tell you the beacon of hope has been lit. Midnight has struck on the Chatham Islands."

Plunket continued with the broadcast without mentioning what some listeners would have been thinking: Y2K was a thing. The Millennium bug was real. Societal meltdown was imminent.

But the dropped call was not a sign of things to come.

This New Year marks 25 years since the Y2K fizzle - which ended up an odd disappointment for some.

It all started more than half a century ago when, to save memory space in early computers, programmers shortened the year format to two digits, so 1999 became 99. Y2K or the millennium bug was a theory that computers would not know how to interpret the date when the digits clicked over to 00 for the year 2000.

Banking systems, the electrical grid, telecommunication networks, and anything else that relied on computers could collapse, or so we feared. Governments and companies spent millions of dollars proofing their computer systems for the moment.

As New Year's Eve approached, many people prepared for a once-in-a-millennium party. Others stocked up on cash, gas, water and food.

RNZ, called National Radio at the time, was and is a lifeline utility during emergencies. If Y2K triggered a major disaster, RNZ would be a vital source of information for New Zealanders.

"One of the things we were looking out for was this Y2K bug. If it's really going to cause trouble, we were probably going to find out pretty soon during my shift," Bryan Crump, the RNZ presenter who took over from Plunket at 1am, said.

"In fact, I'm pretty sure that we kind of half-joked, 'Well, will we have a show or not?'"

Katrina Batten, the sound engineer on Plunket's midnight broadcast, remembers her nerves rising as the clock ticked towards 12am. Like many others, she had withdrawn a few hundred dollars from the bank as a precaution (although there was also a rumour that ATMs would spit out money at midnight. It was a weird time).

"I'm pretty sure I volunteered [for the shift] because I wanted to be part of it if something did happen."

Batten had a knack for handling live radio when news broke. Plunket was a good choice too. While he breezed through the lighthearted interviews throughout the night, "he would have been able to jump into full newsy mode" if Y2k caused problems, she said.

"And of course, if the electricity had gone out, all the transmitters that Radio New Zealand uses around the country all have diesel-generated backups. There would have been extra attention paid to those generators."

The person with the most unusual task that night was probably Paul Diamond. He was RNZ's consumer affairs reporter and covered New Zealand's Y2K preparations.

On New Year's Eve, he reported live from the National Crisis Management Centre, two storeys below the Beehive and known as the Beehive Bunker.

In an email to RNZ, Diamond described the centre as circular with a confusing layout. At least one room had sleeping bunks.

"There'd been so much work in the run-up to the night, that it seemed unlikely there would be problems. Nonetheless, there was still a risk, so there was some anxiety, especially as we knew that problems here could be an early warning for the rest of the world," Diamond wrote.

In a live cross with Plunket at 28 minutes before midnight, Diamond described a hive of activity amongst the 100 or so government employees in the bunker and a nearby banquet hall. About 50 of the staff were part of New Zealand's Y2K Readiness Commission, which was set up years before to ensure New Zealand's systems were "Y2K ready".

"The two are linked up with a video link so they can see straight away what incidents both millennium and Y2K related as they happen across the country," Diamond said to Plunket during the live cross.

Meanwhile, back in RNZ's Wellington office, the veins on bulletin editor Kevin McCarthy's neck were protruding more than normal. It was not stress from the unknowns of Y2K, but because of the unusually long 10-minute news bulletin he was overseeing for after midnight.

"It may have all been a big, nothingburger from the start. Who knows?" McCarthy said of Y2K.

At 23 minutes to midnight, Plunket cheerily chatted in a live cross with a New Zealand travel agent on a cruise liner near the international date line. Passengers had already enjoyed one New Year and were set to cross over the date line for another New Year almost 24 hours later.

There were live crosses to concerts in the Viaduct in Auckland and the nearby Domain. Then it was time for the final live cross of 1999 to Dunedin where church bells - as is tradition - counted down to the New Year. Cheering and the sound of fireworks followed.

New Zealand had clicked over from 1999 to 2000 and there were no more notable glitches to RNZ's broadcast.

"Happy New Year. Happy millennium," Plunket said as he quickly went to another live cross with a reporter on Wellington's waterfront.

About 14 minutes after midnight, Plunket checked in with Diamond, who was in the bunker when midnight struck and the millennium bug did not.

"If the bug was going to bite we might expect to see the first signs or symptoms of that now," Plunket said, as he introduced Diamond.

"The changeover happened, the lights stayed on and they toasted themselves with grape juice," Diamond said, of government staff reactions.

Even now, Diamond said he did not believe preparing for Y2K was a waste of money and there were lessons in there for the present.

"Making sure infrastructure is robust is still a big concern, but is more difficult now that technology is more complex and interconnected. Our dependence on technology is also a lot greater than it was in 1999," he wrote in his recent email.

A survey from the Y2K Readiness Commission found that New Zealand companies spent more than $1 billion on preparations, according to the New Zealand Herald. Three out of four identified moderate to major issues that were patched before 2000. However, some critics hold the view that Y2K was a problem exaggerated by consultants who cashed in on doomsday fears.

At RNZ's Wellington studio, McCarthy's news bulletin went to air without a hitch, announcing Russia's new president, Vladimir Putin. McCarthy received several calls from global news outlets including the BBC asking if New Zealand had experienced millennium bug issues. Other than an overloaded telecommunications system, a fixture of every New Year, there was nothing to report.

Then it was time for Plunket to hand over presenter duties to Crump. He started his show at 1am with this: "Well, just like the chicken, we have made it to the other side."

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