Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve

Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve (NYRE) is an annual New Year's Eve television special broadcast by ABC. The special broadcasts primarily from New York City's Times Square and prominently features coverage of its annual ball drop event, along with live and pre-recorded musical performances by popular musicians from Times Square and Hollywood. Since 2016–17, the special has regularly included performances and coverage of midnight festivities from other locations, including New Orleans (Central Time) and San Juan (Atlantic Time, since 2021–22). Its creator and namesake was the entertainer Dick Clark, who conceived New Year's Rockin' Eve as a younger-skewing competitor to Guy Lombardo's popular and long-running New Year's Eve big band broadcasts on CBS. The special first aired on December 31, 1972; its first two editions were broadcast by NBC, and hosted by Three Dog Night and George Carlin, respectively, with Clark anchoring coverage from Times Square. In 1974–75, the program moved to its current home of ABC, and Clark assumed the role of host. Since 2000–01, the special has broadcast segments in prime time alongside the main late-night broadcast; initially occupying the 10:00 p.m. ET/PT hour, from 2011–12 onward the special has occupied the entirety of ABC's primetime schedule on New Year's Eve. Following the death of Guy Lombardo and the decline of CBS's specials, New Year's Rockin' Eve grew in popularity and became ingrained in pop culture—prompting Clark himself to make appearances on other programs in parodies of his role. New Year's Rockin' Eve has consistently remained the highest-rated New Year's Eve special broadcast by the United States' major television networks; its 2012 edition peaked at 22.6 million home viewers—not including viewers watching from public locations, which were not measured by Nielsen at the time. Dick Clark hosted New Year's Rockin' Eve annually from 1973 through 1999 and from 2001 through 2004. For 2000, in lieu of New Year's Rockin' Eve, Clark joined overall host Peter Jennings as a guest co-host in Times Square for ABC News' day-long ABC 2000 Today broadcast. In December 2004, Clark suffered a stroke, which resulted in Regis Philbin serving as guest host.