Giving New Year’s an outside chance

IN Vegas, New Year’s Eve has been turned inside out.

At the end of 1999, as Las Vegas ushered in the new millennium, the traditional focus of keeping people inside where they could gamble backfired. Despite the Strip being packed with more big-name entertainment than any New Year’s Eve in memory, the night was universally acknowledged as a flop.

Why? In part, the jacked-up room rates resulted in less attendance than expected, but mostly, Las Vegas, the most image-conscious of cities, had decided to nix having midnight fireworks above the Strip. Nothing happened at 11:59 to announce the new millennium. The national media covering the occasion were at a loss.

“It was horrible,” recalls Ethan Miller. Miller was photographing Vegas that night for Reuters, and trying to find a quintessentially defining picture. “I think I wound up shooting people in line for something at Mandalay Bay.”

After the great fizzle, New Year’s Eve here changed. The resorts began to move away from expensive big-name entertainers, and toward what has become known as America’s Party: a combination of a reasonably priced, eclectic outdoor concert at the Fremont Street Experience and a massive fireworks display that stretches from the Strip to downtown.

The fireworks in particular have become a reliable commercial for Vegas transmitted the world over. The result has been to make New Year’s Eve in Vegas more popular than ever with numbers hitting 300,000 visitors. That will be true again this year despite what is probably a first: all the larger concert venues in Vegas will be dark for New Year’s Eve.

“With the national media it is always the Strip,” says Anthony Curtis, publisher of the consumer newsletter Las Vegas Advisor. “The cameras were showing the Strip at midnight and nothing happened. That was probably the biggest mistake, PR-wise, Las Vegas ever made.”

After that debacle, a blame game erupted between casinos, politicians and the organization tasked with promoting tourism in southern Nevada, the quasi-public Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. By the time 2000 was ready to pass into 2001, plans were in place for a huge fireworks display.

“After the fiasco in 1999-2000, Vegas decided in its infinite wisdom that it was just as important as Times Square to New Year’s Eve television,” recalls Robin Leach, who covers everything Vegas for AOL. Leach, the former “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” host, knows a thing or two about television: “Those fireworks are irresistible to television cameras.”

The Strip as Times Square West may still seem a bit of a stretch; yet from the start, photos and footage of the fireworks received prominent play in national coverage.

This year the fireworks launch will include nine rooftops on the Strip and the concert bill downtown includes Smash Mouth, Chicago, Rockstar: Supernova, Five for Fighting and All-American Rejects. Of course, the bands on Fremont Street Experience aren’t really a draw for Vegas so much as entertainment for people who are already coming here.

Las Vegas resident and Smash Mouth singer Steve Harwell says big concerts used to dominate the celebration. “But New Year’s Eve has become the national holiday for people to go to Vegas,” he says.

If you scan the events this year there are no major concerts taking place on the Strip. For example, the Mandalay Bay Events Center (and the MGM Grand Garden Arena will be empty.

The Colosseum at Caesars, which didn’t exist in 1999 and where Celine and Elton perform regularly, has no performances scheduled. The nightclub at Caesars, Pure, will feature about the only big-name performer in Vegas this New Year’s Eve: Britney Spears. But Spears is not going to sing; she’ll only lead the club’s midnight countdown.

There are, of course, some concerts: Lionel Richie is performing at the Blue Man Theatre in the Venetian and whatever passes for Sha Na Na these days is at the Riviera.

Anthony Curtis points out: “Just being in Vegas on New Year’s Eve has always been the hot ticket. All the casinos get their biggest high rollers in town that night. The resorts don’t need any fireworks or events to pack New Year’s Eve. That publicity is for the rest of the year.” New Year’s essentially has drained inside out. Instead of big concerts to make a blow-out weekend for the high-rollers, the focus has increasingly been on creating an event outside for the cameras.

Flashy is always the way to go in Vegas.

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For more on what’s happening on and off the Strip, see latimes.com/movablebuffet.