Clark new year's rockin' eve 1972_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, broadcasting live from festivities at New York City's Times Square. The special features performances from various contemporary artists, as well as coverage of the dropping of the Times Square Ball in New York City's Times Square. The program airs live in the Eastern Time Zone, and then on tape delay in the other areas of the United States so that the show is correlated to when midnight strikes in the other respective time zones.

Its host, creator and namesake was entertainer Dick Clark, who hosted coverage of the New Year's Eve celebrations in Times Square for ABC (through both the the show and ABC's special coverage of millennium celebrations) annually from 1975 to 2004 — when the complications of a stroke less than a month prior prevented him from participating in the 2005 edition, resulting in Regis Philbin substituting as host. While Dick Clark would return from 2006 to 2012, his role on Rockin' Eve became more limited due to Clark's dysarthria (a lingering effect from the stroke), as Ryan Seacrest became the main on-air host for the program.
On April 18, 2012 the long-time host of the show, Dick Clark, died after suffering a massive heart attack. As of right now, ABC has not announced any plans for the future of New Year's Rockin' Eve.


source: wikipedia