European TV to mark millennium

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is planning a major event involving national television stations to mark the year 2000. The co-production will be be "a strong and confident statement" about public service broadcasting, said Mr Liam Miller, chairman of the EBU Millennium Task Force, at a conference in Prague yesterday. Mr Miller said as many as "11 or 12" European national stations would be joining with the American PBS network for a special Millennium Day. The EBU had set up a website for broadcasters to exchange ideas for possible co-productions, he said. Mr Miller, who is also managing director of organisation and development at RTE, was speaking at the "Religion 97" conference, which is being attended by representatives of religious programmes departments from over 30 television stations in Europe.

Father Dermod McCarthy, chairman of the EBU's religious programmes division, and Head of Religious Programmes at RTE, told the conference yesterday that he hoped delegates would take a fresh look at what the viewing public expected "from us, religious broadcasters".

Religious programmes, Father McCarthy said, were ideally placed to address the millennium in the deepest and most substantial way. Among the programmes being prepared for the millennium year is The Great Hope. Produced by ARD, German television, it will feature the dissident Catholic theologian, Hans Kung, in a seven-part series on what is the common ethos of all the world's great religions.