If you’re not able to get out or find a party New Year’s Eve, and your television set or cable connection blows, you don’t have to miss the revelry: The world’s first live Webcast of the annual Times Square celebrations will be provided by MSN. And it won’t cost you a thing to watch.
Viewers can choose from three live streams of the event, from when the famous ball lights up atop One Times Square until 15 minutes after the ball drops for “Auld Lang Syne,” in what The Hollywood Reporter calls a collaboration between the Times Square Alliance, Countdown Entertainment, Clear Channel Entertainment Television, and MSN, with Limelight Networks, a digital delivery network, supporting the stream as well.
One of the streams will show a Webcast packed with celebrities – including Olympic legends Pele and Nadia Comaneci giving greetings in their native languages – while another will show crowd shots, backstage action, and “other atmospheric shots,” the Reporter said. A third will show live, uninterrupted feeds being offered to all American and international television stations and networks.
"The Times Square 2005 MSN Webcast demonstrates how interactive digital media can enable people to not only share but participate in the excitement," MSN director Adam Sohn told reporters. "It illustrates how digital media can provide coverage of live events beyond what a viewer can get on TV."
