New Year’s Rockin’ Eve 2016: Start time; Carrie Underwood, One Direction to perform; Taylor Swift video to premiere

New Year’s Rockin’ Eve has become a massive tradition for ABC over the years, just as it has also become a ratings magnet. There are a variety of big-name performers who hit the stage either live in New York, or in prerecorded numbers from Los Angeles’ Billboard Hollywood Party. This is a busy show with a lot of moving parts, and the festivities are going to begin starting at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time.

For those of you wondering who will be out in Los Angeles, it’s an eclectic group including headlining act One Direction, 5 Seconds of Summer, Alessia Cara, DNCE, Fall Out Boy, Andy Grammer, Ellie Goulding, Nick Jonas, Elle King, Tove Lo, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, OMI, Pentatonix, Rachel Platten, and Nathan Sykes. Many of these acts really did define music for this past year, with OMI having arguably the song of the summer with “Cheerleader” and One Direction continuing to be one of the biggest groups on the planet.

Meanwhile, in New York Carrie Underwood will headline the show hosted by Ryan Secrest, with Luke Bryan, Demi Lovato, and Wiz Khalifa featuring Charlie Puth joining her in front of what could be over a million people in Times Square. It’s one of the craziest events of the year for a reason, and we can only imagine the sort of logistic problems this creates for the era year in and year out.

The New Year’s celebration will actually continue in one form or another well after midnight, as ABC will help to ring in the New Year for people watching both in the Central and Mountain time zones. If you’re on the West Coast or in Alaska or Hawaii … well, you’re going to be getting a little bit of a tape delay.