Not long after Anderson Cooper started hosting CNN’s New Year’s Eve coverage from Times Square in 2002, the news program often became the news.
Over the last two decades, Cooper has been joined by several of his colleagues and celebrities during New Year’s Eve Live broadcast, which has gotten increasingly longer over the years. In 2007, Kathy Griffin joined as the journalist’s official cohost. While the unlikely duo brought the laughs, Griffin made waves annually for her dirty jokes and cursing. Still, the network stood by her — until May 2017 when the My Life on the D-List alum came under fire for posing with a fake severed head of then-President Donald Trump.
After Cooper tweeted that he was “appalled by the photo shoot,” calling it “clearly disgusting and completely inappropriate,” the network cut ties with Griffin.
The Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty author’s best friend Andy Cohen subsequently took over Griffin’s gig.
Cooper and Cohen continued to keep the coverage light, with the Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen host encouraging his pal to take a shot every hour.
“We like to think that we are the only TV hosts on New Year’s Eve who are actually having fun,” Cooper said on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert in December 2022. “I started covering New Year’s Eve, like, 17 years ago for CNN. … They had no one else to do it so I volunteered to do it … because I’ve always hated New Year’s Eve.”
Colbert pondered why the network created content that night at all. “On the off chance that time didn’t pass that night? Because that would be the only news — if it didn’t become January 1 at midnight,” he quipped.
“I love New Year’s Eve,” Cohen added at the time. “I love an overhyped event. And covering New Year’s Eve is — I say this every year — it is like a telethon with no disease. We are standing there just marking the passing of time. … It’s an odd thing.”
Colbert subsequently showed a picture of Cohen going off during the 2021-22 broadcast — the year the “overserved” Bravo host made headlines for shading Mayor Bill de Blasio and Ryan Seacrest.
“That was one of my rants. I had things to say!” Cohen recalled, noting that he wasn’t impressed with the band Journey performing without Steve Perry on ABC. “They sprayed me with their stuff, [I was] covered with their glitter and so it just rubbed me the wrong way. … I was calling it fake Journey and, you know, Neal Schon went after me for about a year on Twitter. And I felt terribly after but I’m a Steve Perry fan.”
Cooper then joked: “That is the face of someone just watching my old friend dig his grave.”
Scroll through for the most-talked-about moments from the broadcast over the years: