You'll only ever hear me say this once, so pay attention!

In My Humble Opinion
1

Since my 4th of July plans went in the crapper when the car broke down I was at home watching the NYC fireworks on NBC tonite.

I have to say I was really impressed and I take my hat off to the city for how they put that together. If anyone missed it they had 5 different firing locations on the waterways surrounding Manhattan (IIRC). The pyrotechnics were esentially the same and timed out very well together. I think it was scheduled to go 23 minutes solid, but my watch showed it closer to 26 minutes. I imagine it was a great strategy if you were there in person, and it allowed the large crowd to disperse to a more comfortable level. It was quite good, although it seems the city sold exclusive national TV rights and Macy’s sponsored it. Not sure how much it actually cost the city directly. I think I heard a stat of 60 tons of fireworks, the largest display ever.

NBC’s coverage however was pretty iffy, going out of their way to promote their personalies and new shows, completely superceeding the event itself. They also went to commercial during the finale, so everyone on TV missed the big loud finale, all so they could squeeze in the commercial and make the cut off at the top of the hour. Tacky.

2

I much prefer A&E’s coverage of the Boston Pops fireworks. This year, the announcers were silent, and all you could hear was the music and the explosion of the shells.

There were two disappointments, however. They sunk to new cultural lows by using Lord of the Dance and the Theme from Titanic. The rest of it was grand entertainment.

Robin

3

I only caught 5 minutes of it. Was trying to figure out why Tim Robbins was wearing a scuzzy baseball-style t-shirt for his part of the recitation of the Declaration of Independence?!?

That’s my insightful comment of the evening.

It is cool that they recited it. The NYT ran a copy of it full-page