Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest Tuesday night saw a year-over-year decline in viewers, but still managed to make it into 2025 by winning the ratings as the most-watched televised New Year's Eve event.
The annual special on ABC averaged 7.9 million viewers in prime time from 8pm to 11:30pm EST, which was down 6% from last year's 8.4 million viewers. Of course, the late-night edition attracted a much larger crowd in anticipation of ball drop, averaging 17.9 million from 11:30pm to 12:30am, on par with the 2023 celebration.
Viewing rose to 22 million, again in line with last year, at a quarter past midnight when the ball dropped in Times Square.
As usual, the audience grew throughout the night, with the smallest viewership recorded at 8 to 10 p.m., when about 6.2 million tuned in. From 10 to 11:30, that number swelled to 9.5 million before nearly doubling in the final hour of the broadcast. Night.
Rockin' on New Year's Eve Leading by a large margin, with CBS New Year's Eve Live: The Big Nashville Party It came in second place with 4.9 million from 8pm to 10pm. By late night, the audience for the country-titled event had grown to 6.9 million.
In third place among broadcasters was NBC Day drinking with Seth Meyers New Year's Eve special, which had about 1.5 million viewers from 11:30 to 12:30 a.m.
CNN's coverage with Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen also likely generated a large audience (albeit much smaller than ABC or CBS since it's a cable network), as it features the usual New Year's Eve festivities as well as interviews with Diplo, Ralph Fiennes, and more. This data is not completely available yet, but this post will be updated when/if it is.
Dick Clark Productions is a subsidiary of Penske Media, as is Deadline.
