page_title: Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve
section_title: Rise in popularity
hierarchical_section_title: Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve / History / Rise in popularity
caption_attribution_description: English: Dick Clark backstage during the Grammy Awards telecast 2/21/90
context_page_description: Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve 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, in addition to live performances and coverage of festivities from New Orleans.
  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, in 1973 and 1974, were hosted by Three Dog Night and George Carlin, respectively, featured Dick Clark assuming the role of Times Square reporter, and were broadcast by NBC. 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 CBS's specials, 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.
context_section_description: After 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 fifth year on-air. The threat of the new special also prompted CBS to drop the Royal Canadians 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. 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, 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 of Times Square, harsh weather conditions, and a year where the emcee had to contend with a group of 30 nude attendees in the background. Clark aimed to continue hosting the special through the year 2000. Ultimately, Clark hosted the program nearly uninterrupted through 2004. The late-night portion of the 1997–98 edition was followed by a second, hour-long special at 1:05 a.m., After New Year's Eve, which was hosted by David Sanborn and featured Boz Scaggs, Isaac Hayes, Dr. John, Joan Osborne, Lou Reed, and Naughty by Nature.
  The popularity of New Year's Rockin' Eve also resulted in Clark making appearances on other television series to reference his role. During a Y2K-themed short in The Simpsons' 1999 Halloween special "Treehouse of Horror X", Clark made a cameo appearance hosting a New Year's Eve event in Springfield. The Y2K bug caused the emcee to melt, exposing him as a robot. In an interview following the episode's airing with its writer, Ron Hauge, Clark said that the episode gave the "biggest response" he had ever gotten from anything he had ever done. Clark made a further appearance during the pilot episode of fellow Matt Groening series Futurama, "Space Pilot 3000", where Clark's head (as preserved in a jar) hosts New Year's Rockin' Eve 3000. In the 1994 film Forrest Gump,  footage of Clark from the first edition of New Year's Rockin' Eve is seen on a television at a bar during a scene of the film taking place on New Year's Eve in 1972. New Year's Rockin' Eve was also the subject of an episode of the sitcom Friends, "The One with the Routine", in which Janine Lecroix invites Joey, Ross, and Monica to attend a studio taping for New Year's Rockin' Eve as audience members.
caption: Dick Clark, creator, host and namesake of the show.
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