Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve (NYRE), billed since 2008 as Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest, is a 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 hosted by television personality Ryan Seacrest, 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 U.S. locations, including New Orleans (Central Time, from 2017 to 2024), San Juan (Atlantic Time, from 2021 to 2022), and Las Vegas.
Its creator and namesake was television personality Dick Clark, who conceived New Year's Rockin' Eve as a youthful competitor to Guy Lombardo's popular and long-running New Year's Eve specials on CBS. The special first aired on December 31, 1971; its first three 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 permanent home on 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 and late-night schedule on New Year's Eve.
Following the death of Guy Lombardo on November 5, 1977, and the decline of CBS's specials, New Year's Rockin' Eve grew in popularity and became the dominant New Year's special on American television. 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 yet measured by Nielsen at the time. The special was renewed through at least 2028–29 in November 2023.
Dick Clark hosted New Year's Rockin' Eve annually from 1971 through 2004. For 2000, Clark participated in ABC News' day-long ABC 2000 Today telecast, joining overall host Peter Jennings for coverage from Times Square. In December 2004, Clark suffered a stroke, which resulted in Regis Philbin serving as guest host. As Clark experienced lingering speech impediments from the stroke, Ryan Seacrest began serving as a host and executive producer the following year. Clark continued to make limited appearances as a co-host until his death on April 18, 2012. Hosting solo since the 2012–13 edition, Seacrest has been accompanied by various guest correspondents; since the 2023–24 edition, Rita Ora has served as a Times Square correspondent, while Jeannie Mai has hosted the Los Angeles-based concert segments.
Format New Year's Rockin' Eve is primarily broadcast from Times Square in New York City, providing coverage of the New Year's Eve festivities held there, and culminating with the long-running ball drop approaching midnight ET. Performances by popular musicians are featured throughout the special: most of these performances, currently billed as the "Billboard Hollywood Party", are pre-recorded from a studio in Los Angeles. The special has also featured live, headlining performances from a stage in Times Square, and has occasionally featured performances from other U.S. cities.
Since 2005, Ryan Seacrest has hosted the live show outside in Times Square, joined by a celebrity correspondent providing additional reports from attendees. From his return and until his death, Dick Clark hosted a limited number of segments from Times Square Studios throughout the broadcast, including the countdown (after which he traditionally kissed his wife Kari Wigton at midnight).
Since the 2000–01 edition, the special has begun with a segment in prime time, which was initially branded as Dick Clark's Primetime New Year's Rockin' Eve, and is currently billed for ratings purposes as "Primetime – Part 1". Initially airing at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT, the prime time block was extended to 8:00 p.m. ("Part I", with the remaining primetime block billed as "Part II") beginning with the 2011–12 edition. From 2011–12 to 2013–14, "Part I" primarily featured retrospective countdowns using archive footage from the Dick Clark Productions library, including the top New Year's Rockin' Eve performances of all-time (in honor of the special's 40th anniversary), and the top women in music.
Following a 30-minute break for late local programming (such as late-night newscasts), the second block of the program is broadcast, which begins at 10:30 p.m. ET/PT (previously at 11:30 p.m. until 2021–22), and features coverage of midnight celebrations in the Atlantic Time Zone from the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico at 10:59 p.m. ET and in the Eastern Time Zone from the Times Square ball drop at 11:59 p.m. ET. Until the addition of the prime time block, this segment served as the main block (and from 1997–98 onward, "Part I") of the entire Rockin' Eve telecast. From 2016–17 through 2022–23, the late-night block also featured coverage from the Jackson Square fleur-de-lis drop in New Orleans at midnight in the Central Time Zone; a Central Time segment from Chicago was introduced for the 2025–26 edition.
After the conclusion of coverage from Times Square, the show continues into its final block, which usually features the remainder of the pre-recorded concert segments. Debuting with the 2000–01 edition, the secondary late-night segment usually runs up to approximately 2:10 a.m. ET/PT, and has run as late as 4:00 a.m. ET/PT (2025–26).
History 1972–1975: Conception and premiere
Prior to the premiere of New Year's Rockin' Eve, the most well-known New Year's Eve program was the annual big band remote of bandleader Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians, broadcast from the ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Guy Lombardo hosted 48 straight New Year's Eve broadcasts on CBS until his death in 1977, beginning on radio in 1928 (and for a period, splitting with NBC Radio following midnight ET), and on CBS Television from 1956 to 1976 (which also featured coverage of the ball drop in Times Square). Lombardo was also well known for his band's performance of the song "Auld Lang Syne" at midnight, which helped make the standard synonymous with the New Year's holiday in North America.
At the time, Dick Clark was well known as the host of American Bandstand, a music program produced from the studios of Philadelphia television station WFIL-TV (now WPVI-TV) and broadcast by ABC. Bandstand itself aired a New Year's Eve special on December 31, 1959.
By the 1970s, Clark felt that Guy Lombardo's New Year's specials were outdated and did not appeal well to younger viewers; he believed that only older viewers would be interested in big band music accompanied by "people dancing cheek-to-jowl in their tuxedos and funny hats". In response, he decided to produce a more youthful New Year's Eve special of his own to compete. Clark's new program would be known as New Year's Rockin' Eve, a name chosen to signify the major contrast between his special and the more formal atmosphere of Guy Lombardo's special. The first edition was aired by NBC on December 31, 1972, titled Three Dog Night's New Year's Rockin' Eve, and was hosted by the members of the rock band Three Dog Night. The special featured pre-recorded musical performances from the ballroom of the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California by Helen Reddy, Billy Preston, and Three Dog Night. Clark served as a reporter from Times Square for live coverage of the ball drop and arrival of 1973.
The second special, New Year's Rockin' Eve '74, also on NBC, was hosted by comedian George Carlin and featured pre-recorded musical performances by The Pointer Sisters, Billy Preston, Linda Ronstadt and Tower of Power once again from the Queen Mary ballroom. Beginning with the 1974-75 edition, the program moved to ABC and Clark assumed hosting duties; billed as Chicago's New Year's Rockin' Eve 1975 and seen as part of ABC's Wide World of Entertainment late-night block, the first ABC edition was headlined by the rock band Chicago, with guests The Beach Boys, The Doobie Brothers, Herbie Hancock and Olivia Newton-John, in segments pre-recorded at MGM Studios in Hollywood.
1976–1999: Rise in popularity Following Guy Lombardo's death in 1977, CBS and the Royal Canadians attempted to continue their New Year's Eve broadcasts from the Waldorf-Astoria for 1977–78. However, the effects of Lombardo's absence led to a decline in viewership, allowing New Year's Rockin' Eve to overtake the Royal Canadians in viewership in only its sixth year on-air. The threat of the new special also prompted CBS to discontinue the Royal Canadians special entirely in 1979 in favor of a new special, Happy New Year, America, which premiered for New Year's Eve 1979–80. With its recent success, Clark began hoping that New Year's Rockin' Eve would become a television tradition of its own, lamenting that "Lombardo would always win [in New York] because of the Waldorf and 35 years of tradition, but we finally got it wrested." Clark's hopes soon became reality, as New Year's Rockin' Eve had displaced Guy Lombardo as the most popular and most-watched New Year's Eve special on American television in the years following.
The 1980 edition was co-hosted by Erin Moran and John Schneider of Happy Days and The Dukes of Hazzard respectively, and continued with Clark's goal to showcase acts that represented the previous year by featuring Barry Manilow, Blondie, Chic, The Oak Ridge Boys, and the Village People as performers. The 1988 edition was co-hosted by China Beach cast members Marg Helgenberger and Brian Wimmer from the Cocoanut Grove club at the Ambassador Hotel. In 1990, New Year's Eve fell on a Monday; on that night, ABC was scheduled to broadcast a Monday Night Football game between the Los Angeles Rams and the New Orleans Saints. Fearing that his special would not be able to start on time (as ABC usually began its Monday Night Football coverage at the time at 9:00 p.m. ET, which regularly delayed local and network late-night programming), Clark asked ABC to move the game's start time one hour early to 8:00 p.m., so that Rockin' Eve would run at its normal time.
Mark Curry and Holly Robinson of the ABC sitcom Hangin' with Mr. Cooper co-hosted for 1993–94, with segments at Walt Disney World featuring performances by acts such as Brooks and Dunn and Kiss, along with the marriage of two California firefighters, Laura Turpin and Bob Hutnyan. The 1994–95 edition was co-hosted with Margaret Cho and Steve Harvey (then respectively starring in the ABC sitcoms All-American Girl and Me and the Boys, both of which would be cancelled by the end of that television season), and included musical performances from Melissa Etheridge, Hootie & the Blowfish and Salt-N-Pepa.
The 1996–97 edition was co-hosted by Stacey Dash and Donald Faison of the ABC comedy series Clueless, and included performances by Jann Arden, Kiss, "Weird Al" Yankovic, The Presidents of the United States of America, and The Tony Rich Project. This edition also marked the 25th anniversary of New Year's Rockin' Eve; Clark marked this accomplishment by discussing the greatest challenges he had faced hosting the special, including being unable to hear his director over the loud crowds in Times Square, harsh weather conditions, and a year where the host had to contend with a group of 30 naked attendees in the background. Clark aimed to continue hosting the special through the year 2000. Ultimately, Clark hosted the program nearly uninterrupted through 2004.