If there’s one tradition that embodies New Year’s Eve, it’s the countdown to midnight and the start of a new year. The countdown happens on television, in bars, and in private settings, with revelers counting backward from 10 until the prior calendar is left behind. So why do we count down to the new year? The answer is because of a radio broadcaster named Ben Grauer. In 1957, he was stationed at his post overlooking Times Square in New York City. In an apparent effort to paint a visual picture for his NBC listeners, he offered a play-by-play of the ball being dropped, right down to “5-4-3-2-1……Happy New Year!” Grauer was alone in his count because none of the people gathered in Times Square joined him, primarily because no one could hear him on the radio, but also because a communal countdown wasn’t yet in style. Grauer eventually took his broadcasts to television, where he observed the ball drop with a count. By the end of the 1980s, countdown clocks appeared, and New Year’s television programs made a count part of the celebration, including Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. Nowhere else will you find the masses doing some simple arithmetic in unison than at the end of another year.
