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September 7, 2027 will mark 100 years from the day when electronic television made its first appearance on Earth.  To generate interest in the Centennial,  this website and accompanying podcast is going to Count Down the Top 100 Milestones from the First 100 Years of Television over 100 weeks until September 7, 2027.
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In 1904, New York Times publisher Adolph Ochs moved the newspaper’s headquarters into the newly constructed Times Tower at the intersection of Broadway, Seventh Avenue and 42^nd Street in Manhattan.  To mark the occasion, Ochs successfully petitioned the city to rename the area “Times Square^⁠1.”  

To celebrate the move and the new name, the Times sponsored a lavish New Year’s celebration on the square.  Some 200,000 New Yorkers packed the surrounding streets for music and festivities that were topped off with a brilliant fireworks display. Red, white, and blue rockets and flares illuminated Ochs’ new building starting at precisely midnight. 

When the city banned fireworks in 1907, Ochs devised a new centerpiece for the celebration. He commissioned a large, electrically-illuminated ball that would be lowered from a specially constructed pole on the roof of the Times Tower to mark the final seconds of the year.  

Starting at precisely 11:59 PM on December 31, 1907, workers lowered the 700-pound wood-and-iron ball, festooned with one hundred 25-watt light bulbs, from the top of the pole.  One minute later, the ball went dark and another large electrical sign reading “1908” lit up above Times Square.

In the 1920s and ’30s, Times Square became synonymous with New Year’s Eve. The square and surrounding streets drew first tens, then hundreds, of thousands of revelers, packed shoulder to shoulder in the cold, waiting for the glowing orb to descend. Newsreel cameras filmed the event for movie theaters. Radio stations broadcast the countdown live. 

With the exception of two years during World War II, The Times Square “ball drop” has continued every year since.

Starting in 1948, the tradition found its way to television. 

NBC’s first telecast from Times Square was part of a larger New Year’s Eve program hosted by Ben Grauer.  After years of covering events like presidential inaugurations and political conventions, Grauer’s was one of several voices that lent continuity to television’s migration from radio, along with such familiar voices as Lowell Thomas, Ed Sullivan, and Arthur Godfrey. 

That first 1948 telecast from Times Square was certainly modest by today’s standards.  Cameras were stationary and coverage was largely confined to a rooftop vantage point and street-level crowd shots.  For the still relatively small numbers of viewers with access to a television set, the broadcast provided what felt like direct participation in a massive public celebration – without the inconvenience of being stuffed into the crowded square.^⁠2

That first New Years Eve telecast marked the beginning of a new, annual staple in American culture. As television penetration increased throughout the 1950s, more stations picked up the coverage. NBC continued broadcasting the festivities into the early 1950s. CBS joined the spectacle with its own New Year’s specials.

The defining figure in televised New Year’s entertainment arrived in 1972, when Dick Clark ^⁠3launched New Year’s Rockin’ Eve on ABC.  Clark’s innovation was targeting a younger audience with pop music performances and slicker, state-of-the-art production values.  Dick Clark hosted the annual ritual for thirty years. Until suffering a stroke in 2004, Clark was the de facto Master of Ceremonies for America’s year-end festivities.

Other networks and hosts added their own imprint to the Times Square coverage. Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians were a fixture on CBS for decades, providing a more traditional, ballroom-style version of the event that appealed to older viewers.  Lombardo’s association with New Year’s Eve began on radio in 1929 with his orchestra playing Auld Lang Syne at the stroke of midnight.  He took his act to television in 1956/57, starting what amounted to a generational split in New Year’s viewing: younger audiences gravitated to Clark, while older audiences stayed with CBS until Lombardo’s death in 1977.

In the decades since 1948/49, television has been instrumental in turning the Times Square ball drop into a national ritual.  Over the years, the original ball has been replaced several times.  The current version was introduced in 2008.  The 12-foot geodesic sphere made of Waterford Crystal and LED lights, capable of displaying over 16 million colors and billions of patterns, is a far cry from the one-hundred 25-watt bulbs used in 1907/08. The coverage now includes aerial drone shots, roaming Steadicams, real-time countdown animations, and satellite feeds that beam the moment to millions of homes and screens around the globe.

Still, the essential image remains unchanged: a glowing ball in descent, a crowd cheering against the cold, and a moment of collective passage from one year into the next. 

¹ Prior to 1904, the area was called Longacre Square, named after Long Acre in London—a district known for its carriage trade. In the 19th century, New York’s Longacre had a similar character, filled with stables, blacksmiths, and carriage manufacturers.

By the turn of the 20th century, the area shifted from the carriage trade to theaters, vaudeville houses, and electrified billboards.  When The New York Times moved to its new HQ, the paper’s owners successfully petitioned the city to rename the area Times Square.

² To say nothing of easy access to a restroom. Once the event became a television ritual starting in 1948, many people chose to stay home – warm, and near a bathroom. This shifted Times Square from a local gathering to a televised spectacle, reducing the percentage of diehards on-site.

³ More on Clark when we get to American Bandstand

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