Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest is on the up and up.
The annual special was up 30% in primetime on ABC with an average of about 8.4M people tuning in from 8 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. Meanwhile, the late-night edition posted a whopping 18M viewers, soaring to 22.2M by the time the ball dropped in Times Square.
As expected, the audience grew as the night went on. By 10:30 p.m., about 10.4M people were watching, while the first two hours of the show averaged around 7M. Things fell off after midnight, with the second half of the late-night show only drawing 5.1M viewers.
Still, that’s a great increase from last year, up 35% for the first half of the primetime broadcast and 30% for the second half. In terms of adults 18-49, the special scored a 1.81 rating in the first half and a 2.93 in the second half — both marking three-year highs.
Same goes for late night, which averaged a 5.33 rating. In the midnight quarter-hour, the late night show swelled to a 6.41 rating.
According to Nielsen, the late night show’s 5.33 average rating puts it as the highest-rated entertainment special on any network in 2 years – since ABC’s 2021 broadcast of New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.
Despite the audience dropping off steeply after midnight, it was still a win for ABC. The second part of the late night show was up 19% in total viewers and 14% among adults 19-49, managing a 1.47 rating even though it started at 1:09 a.m. ET.
Dick Clark Productions is a Penske Media company, as is Deadline.
