With less than 3 days until the media launch, more details have been revealed about this year’s Sydney New Year’s Eve (Sydney NYE).
Firstly, the newly-released boating map confirms no pyrotechnics will be fired between 9:08pm & Midnight again. As stated in the most recent Sydney NYE media release, the event guides have also been released.
The event guides reveal the following:
- No indication at all of a theme. It does say Celebrate Summer In Sydney in a location where a theme would be mentioned but this looks more likely to be a tourism slogan than a theme. If this isn’t a theme, which is likely, this is very likely to be the 1st Sydney NYE since the mid-1990’s to not have a theme.
- ‘Lighting’ will feature during & after the 9pm Family Fireworks. This is possibly similar to last year’s lighting display on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which was a row of lights along the roadway.
- There is no Bridge Effect (which was likely to happen).
- There is no YouTube Live Stream this year.
- This is no smartphone application this year.
The last 2 dot points we hope we are wrong about but it looks very likely now given the event guide does not mention them.
Also, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has begun advertising their broadcast of the event (including television commercials!) as well as publishing their official webpage of the broadcast!
The ABC NYE broadcast webpage reveals the following:
- The broadcast will, in fact, start at 8:35pm AEDT
- Sydney New Year’s Eve will be broadcast on Facebook for the very 1st time!
There is no confirmation yet whether geoblocking for all Internet broadcast mediums will be lifted for the Sydney NYE broadcast. The ABC does lift geoblocking for various events so given the international appeal of Sydney NYE, it is possible the ABC will drop the geoblock for the night so international audiences can watch Sydney NYE via the Internet.
Remember to watch Sydney NYE on television in high definition (HD) in Australia, make sure you got an MPEG-4 compliant set-top box & re-scan it to pick up the new HD channel of ABC! The new channel begun last Monday with ABC News 24 reverting to standard definition.
In the end, it is starting to become clear that Sydney NYE is taking a different approach with less focus on dramatic creative theming and keeping it as ‘just fireworks’. They also seem to be focusing more on the domestic market rather than the international market. This would be the biggest shift in the event since Ric Birch & his Spectak Productions team produced the event for the 1st time in 1996.
Heading towards the 12th of December, it’s probably worthy advice to not get too excited about this year’s Sydney NYE & that anything special will be revealed at the media launch. Everything is probably already revealed & the event is probably intentionally dropping it’s standards in everything but fireworks.
Sydney used to be on a higher creative level than any other city around the world. This year, it looks likely to drop to the standards of London and Dubai & blend in with other community NYE celebrations around the world. The golden era of Sydney NYE is looking likely to be over but the fireworks will still be spectacular. Maybe Monday’s media launch will prove this as all incorrect?
Hopefully, they could at least bring back the ‘Smiley Face’ Sydney Harbour Bridge Effect on an annual basis…
Sydney Spectaculars 