But I come here not to bury the Macy's parade, but to praise it. No matter how bad the coverage may be (and whether you watch it on NBC or CBS, it's equally bad), I still have to catch a few minutes of it while flipping back and forth between the other parades. And when you strip away all that's annoying, it's still magically colorful. (Probably the best way to see it is to go to New York and view it from a point where the pop stars aren't warbling.) Take a trip through the years with the ads below, most of which have a prominent mention of the television coverage.
There was no TV for the first parade, though. I wonder if anyone thought it would last.
No parade was held between 1942 and 1944 due to the war. I'm guessing this might have been from the first year without the parade; having the balloons enlist is a clever way to make the point that everyone needs to sacrifice for the war effort.
The 1946 parade was not only the first to be televised, it was also the parade that appears in the greatest Christmas movie of all time, Miracle on 34th Street. Edmund Gwynn, who plays Santa in the movie (and won an Academy Award for it), was in fact the Santa in the Macy's parade that year.
This ad for the 1954 parade is just fun, don't you think? It sums up the magic of Thanksgiving and Christmas all in one. You can see that, since the 1946 broadcast, television has now become an integral part of the company's advertising strategy.
The 1963 parade went on as scheduled, even thought it was six days after the assassination of President Kennedy, and the day after Lyndon Johnson's speech to a somber joint session of Congress. The rationale was to try and keep the day as normal as possible for children. All of the floats were adorned with black mourning streamers.
McDonald's was a sponsor of the telecast in 1965; it looks kind of like kids were supposed to color this in, doesn't it? And take a look at the vintage version of the Golden Arches at the bottom. Remember when all McDonald's looked that way?
An ad for the 1968 parade, from WRGB-TV in Albany, New York.
The 1982 parade; Bullwinkle is in the parade for the 22nd time, despite the fact that Rocky and Bullwinkle haven't been on network TV since 1964. The years may change, but the characters stay the same.
Garfield the cat appeared for the first time in the 1984 parade, as did Raggedy Ann, at least this incarnation. As the small print says, be sure to "See it live or on NBC-TV.!
Here's the poster for the 2019 parade. It's filled with the iconic images from history; the Tom Turkey float (which from that angle inspires thoughts of the NBC Peacock—coincidence?), the elves, and, of course, Santa. And speaking of iconic, there's Snoopy in his space suit, throwing back to the famous image of him that became so popular around the 1969 moon landing. And notice the things you didn't see on the other posters: the web address and hashtag.
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ReplyDeleteThis year there was very few Thanksgiving shows. NBC was the only one with such in the Macy's Parade and the recorded two weeks prior Kennel Club of Philadelphia National Dog Show (which shows how different broadcasts can be with an actor recording in a studio in some occasions compared to Fox's Westminster, where Chris Myers is live and things can happen). CBS and ABC had reruns of their daytime fare, although CBS has to toe the line because it only airs in the East/Central zone since soap classics won't air in the Mountain/Pacific because this was their year in the middle and not the early game for Madden Classic. (The Sunday day networks alternate early and middle annually; in years of the early game, the soap classics are not shown to the East/Central zone, and only for Mountain/Pacific.)
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, in Charleston, a field of 8,015 participated in the Knights of Columbus Turkey Day Run and Gobble Wobble 5k. In Manchester, NH, 12,386 ran the 4.74 mile Manchester Road Race. In Buffalo, 10,494 ran the YMCA Turkey Trot there (8k). Dallas had 7,028 official timed runners for the 5k and 8k. Locally, there was a 1,100+ Trot that I laced up for my 24th consecutive year of doing one. Walterboro had its first with about 110. And Sumter had 300.
Over 1.2 million people, in addition to dogs and plus parents pushing their kids in strollers, participated in a run Thursday. It feels different when you're running on Thanksgiving morning with friends and still more are doing a Black Friday race ("Turkey Trot and Burn") that doesn't count. For me, having two consecutive years of disqualifications (course closed - lightning and misdirected on cross country route) haven't made me frustrated of these 24 finishes (twice, I did two Thanksgiving Day races in a double-dipping day, they encourage that in the running club).
As for pop stars and dancers lip-synching? The Felkel Incident at church (Andrew, grandson of my mother's sister, is married to Jessica (and their son Brady) is the cousin of Ridge, married to Debbie's daughter Lauren) resulted in me being run out of the local church and having to travel the hour to the Governor's church. The local church that ran me out features a band performing covers of Top 40 hits each Sunday save one, the choir only sings karaoke performances of Top 40 hits from a denomination that denies the inerrancy of Scripture, and the "youth choir" lip-syncs prepackaged everything where now the previous generation wants an adult "drama team" that dances and lip-syncs to the songs they hear off the radio. Nobody wants to sing because they are taught to follow what they see in the parades and music videos.
As for MTV, the only MTV videos are in the mornings. Everything else is general movies and reality shows.
So thankful that I discarded watching parades in 2002 in favour of doing Thanksgiving races. We had over 1,100 runners for the CLA race Thursday and another 1,026 for Shandon on Black Friday. Charleston had over 8,000 for Thanksgiving. Even in 2020 I raced an actual live race (Hot Summer's Night, which was held at 9 AM on Thanksgiving instead of it's normal August date, organised by the Boys and Girls Club that does the Thanksgiving race cancelled that year by authorities around the venue that usually hosted it, DNF Lightning). The next year I ran an 8k cross country race where the course marshals were confused and I was disqualified for missing a turn and timed out after correcting the error.
ReplyDeleteThe dancing and lip synching has become epidemic even in youth church productions that I ended up being targeted for calling it out.