Television: A Global One-Man Show

ABC takes an enterprising look at the past 100 years in an ambitious, 12-hour documentary

Newspaper, magazine and television journalists relish commemorating, and few media outlets have allowed the occasion of the coming millennium to go uncontemplated. This week ABC weighs in with an homage to the current century. Seven years in the making, the project has cost the network $20 million, marking it as one of the most expensive undertakings in the history of the news division. Shapers of the documentary examined more than 3,000 hours of news footage and conducted hundreds of interviews.

The result of all this effort is The Century, a distillation of the past 874,680 hours into 12, or rather six...

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