By Tom Shales
Monday, January 2, 2006

Viewers who tuned in ABC's coverage of the annual New Year's Eve ceremony from Times Square on Saturday may well have been hoping the famous giant ball was the only thing that would drop before the night was over.

Dick Clark, longtime host and co-producer of the event, looked seriously debilitated during several much-ballyhooed but extremely brief appearances scattered throughout the show. Clark, 76, suffered a stroke late in 2004 and missed that year's broadcast but, in a gesture likely to strike some observers as courageous and others as morbid, he vowed to go to New York and preside over Saturday night's telecast, "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve 2006."

Clark, whose life in television began in the 1950s, has built a career on boyish agelessness, or at least the appearance of it. But New Year's Eve he was seen seated behind a desk, immobile, with no close-ups allowed. Virtually his only movement occurred during a poignant moment when his wife swooped in to give him a "Happy New Year" kiss just after midnight.

In a photograph published Thursday by the New York Post, Clark was seen walking with a cane, his facial features somewhat distorted. The picture accompanied a story headlined "Sick Dick's Fight," in which reporter Bill Hoffmann wrote that while Clark "has to struggle to move his body, and his efforts are full of aches and pains," he was "completely unfazed about the world seeing him in this frail condition."

Clark's voice was also affected by the stroke, a fact he acknowledged to viewers when he finally appeared on the air shortly after 11:30. "Last year I had a stroke. I was in bad shape," Clark said. "My speech is not perfect, but I'm getting there." Clark was on camera for a mere 26 seconds when the director abruptly cut to shots of the Times Square crowd as it huddled against the cold and waited for midnight to strike.

Most of the actual hosting chores on ABC were handled by Ryan Seacrest, emcee of the Fox network's popular "American Idol" series. Oddly or not, and perhaps sensing ABC's competitive vulnerability (last year's "Rockin' Eve" ratings were down), Fox mounted its own Times Square show this year with Regis Philbin as the buoyant, bouncing host. Philbin's daily talk show is produced by the Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC, and it appears on ABC affiliates in major markets that include Washington and New York. It was as if on this New Year's Eve, auld acquaintances were forgot, or at least suspended.

Clark's return to "Rockin' Eve" was promoted as if he were going to make his entrance aboard a chariot of fire, or perhaps balancing the legendary 1,070-pound crystal ball on his head. Seacrest made repeated references to the Great Event during a companion prime-time special that aired from 10 to 11 p.m., promising viewers "the return of Mr. New Year's Eve himself, Dick Clark!" But Clark didn't appear until the 11:30 portion of the show, which aired after local 11 o'clock newscasts.

ABC filled up the prime-time hour with recorded performances by pop stars including Green Day, Bon Jovi and the elderly Neil Diamond. Naturally, this being a Disney production, there were also perfunctory and obligatory remote pickups from the Disney theme parks in Anaheim and Orlando.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg joined Seacrest to open the 11:30 telecast, declaring that "it just would not be New Year's Eve without Dick Clark." Many of those watching were too young to remember, but during television's earlier days, the performer most identified with New Year's Eve was bandleader Guy Lombardo, who conducted an orchestra called the Royal Canadians. Each year at midnight on Dec. 31, Lombardo would lead his band in a sentimental rendition of "Auld Lang Syne" as the chimes rang out.

Lombardo once jokingly appeared on NBC's hit comedy series "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" to declare into the camera, "My name is Guy Lombardo, and when I go, I'm taking New Year's Eve with me."

For the record, Clark hasn't made any such threats himself, not even in a similar spoofing spirit.

During a six-second on-screen appearance about 20 minutes before midnight, Clark told ABC viewers that this year's telecast was historic in another way. It would feature "the first live music performance in Times Square in 34 years." Because of the cold and the tsunami of noise, the venue is hardly ideal for even the loudest of rock bands or rap acts.

The artist making history, Clark said, was Mariah Carey. "There's a virtual sea of Mariah Carey fans" flooding Times Square, Clark said (although at another time he seemed to say there was a virtual sea of Mary J. Blige fans). Seacrest introduced Carey, who rose from a hole in the floor of a makeshift stage dressed in what looked like a large snowball of white fur and feathers. Perhaps to tease viewers and worry ABC censors that she might mimic Janet Jackson's infamous nipple-baring at the 2004 Super Bowl, Carey at one point pulled down her tight outfit to reveal even more awesome anatomy than was already on display.

But ABC cut away and that was that, with Carey slinking in and out of what looked like an ermine cape during her song -- portions of which were evidently being lip-synced by the star.

Philbin, meanwhile, had a merry time of it on Fox, chatting by phone with his chum Donald Trump and interviewing actor John O'Hurley, famous first for playing J. Peterman on "Seinfeld" and now for his terpsichorean feats on "Dancing With the Stars." "He's going to appear on Broadway in 'Chicago' soon," Philbin said, probably confusing any viewers who were unaware that "Chicago" is the name of a musical play.

All the New Year's Eve shows, including one on NBC that starred late-night personality Carson Daly, looked cheaply produced, filled as they were with plugs for the performers' movies and CDs ("Idol" alum Carrie Underwood promoting her new single "Jesus, Take the Wheel," for example). The only essential part of any of the shows is the countdown to midnight; everything else is filler, with ABC's going on into the wee hours of the new year.

It wouldn't be easy to come up with a demographic profile of a typical viewer. Hosts Philbin and Clark are over 65, but all the musical acts booked were young contemporary types. There were frequent audio dropouts during one rapper's number, indicating a network censor was manning a "delay" switch to remove potentially troublesome words and phrases.

Even so, the rapper sang of a "born-again vixen with some pimp in her life," whatever that means. Among other highlights: Seacrest at one point referring to the vaunted Clark as "Dick Carrey"; comic Wanda Sykes on NBC's show saying it's been such a "disastrous year" that she's "waiting for Godzilla to show up"; and one young woman in the surging throng that filled Times Square complaining to a roving reporter, "I have to go to the bathroom!"

NBC producers had one good idea. They aired rare footage of the late Johnny Carson welcoming in the year 1966 as host of "The Tonight Show." Carson was in color, but TV was still primitive enough in those days that the remote shots from Times Square were in black-and-white. NBC newsman Ben Grauer hosted the brief segment, noting "the escalation of the war in Vietnam" as a major news story of the day.

Later, live on NBC, Daly told viewers that "a lot has changed" over the years "and yet in a weird way, not much has changed." This New Year's Eve show seemed in a very weird way indeed.