Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest

What it is

Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest  is an annual television special that airs every New Year's Eve on ABC. The special broadcasts 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, respectively. 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 first two editions, which were hosted by Three Dog Night and George Carlin, respectively, and featured Dick Clark assuming the role of Times Square reporter, were broadcast by NBC for 1973 and 1974, respectively. In 1974-75, the program moved to its current home of ABC, and Clark assumed the role of host.Following the death of Guy Lombardo and the decline of the Royal Canadians' special, New Year's Rockin' Eve grew in popularity, and became ingrained in pop culture—even prompting Clark himself to make appearances on other programs in parody of his role. To this day, New Year's Rockin' Eve has 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 are not measured by Nielsen.