Oh, I agree with that. Your OP made me think you were expecting bare legs. I was just saying those are always simulated in cold weather.
This was actually a question I asked as a little kid. I was shocked that the majorettes in band were showing their legs in the Christmas parade, and the band director himself actually told me they were tights because it was so cold (while also makin
I got about as far as the corn song before I decided to go take a nap and tell someone to wake me for Thanksgiving dinner.
Not because the parade was annoying, exactly, but because the people I was watching were annoying to watch it with.
My daffy landlord answered his wife’s question about the ambiguous gender of one of the participants by saying “That’s woke”, and his daughter kept saying to her son, “Do you know who that is? Do you know what that is?” like she does every year.
That was a performance from the new musical How to Dance in Ohio, about a group of school kids with autism, cast entirely with actors who have autism. Looking at the cast photos online, it seems plenty diverse to me so not sure what your problem with that is…
The parade route is about 2½ miles & takes approx 1-1½ hrs to march the route. All the band/dancer/singing performances are only at the end, in front of Herald Square. Yes, the marching bands will play music as they march, but only in formation - they don’t spell out things & the color guard doesn’t do much more than basic twirls until 34th St & the celebrity singers are pretty much smiles & waves until it’s time for them to lip sync, sing their song.
CBS-NY, not having access to these performances has to do something to fill the time. Part of that is all of their plugs & the rest is lots of parade footage ‘on the street’ - as is you were standing there watching them march by. However, they cut in & out & mix it up. If you want to see x & you know x is after y in order you can’t just fast forward until you see y & then start paying attention; x might appear before or ½ hour or 45 mins after y even though they’re marching a block apart from each other
Oh man, you all are watching the parade the wrong way. There are people who go to the parade and live-stream the view from the street on YouTube. You get to see the parade in the time it takes to pass by, no inane commentary, no incongruous musical numbers, no commercials. This is the one I put on my TV (mostly for my kids who absolutely love it for some reason):
The video is long because the stream started quite a while before the parade stepped off (this video is right at the start of the parade).
I think I’ve also watched ActionKid in the past.
I can’t recommend these sources enough.
I love that recommendation. I just hope I can remember it a year from now
I went in person when I was a kid, over 60 years ago, and we got tickets for the Macy’s stands. (We went through the store to get to them.) So we probably saw all the good stuff.
I hadn’t realized that there were two programs covering it, and just set the first I found to record. Next year I’ll look for the official one.
I’ve been twice, I think. My grandparents lived on Long Island, near enough that one year we woke up Thanksgiving morning, and my dad said, “Let’s go to the parade”. I think the parade had actually already stepped off when we left the house. We drove into the city in our minivan, found a spot to park on the street less than 3 blocks from the parade route somewhere not near the beginning, and walked over just in time for the front of the parade to reach us. When the parade had passed we got back in the van and drove back to my grandparent’s house. Super quick, and super easy.
My children want to go, but we now live 6 hours away, so going to the parade would mean Thanksgiving in NYC where we know nobody.
I was there in 1997, and remember a huge break in the parade. “I think there’s more parade coming”. This later proved to be caused by the infamous Cat-In-The-Hat lamppost incident nearly killing somebody. Apparently my memory is faulty though, because I remember it as being a giraffe balloon, and somebody actually dying. I don’t know if that was the same year as the last-minute-dash to the parade.
NBC is the official one, nationally telecast to all NBC affiliates nationwide while the other one is only aired on WCBS / Channel 2 in NYC metro area
I thought that CBS broadcast the parade nationwide?
I got it on the local CBS station in San Francisco, so I suspect you are right.
maybe you’re right; I never remember seeing it locally on CBS until we were in NYC area for Thanksgiving, of course that was many years ago.
I normally don’t bother to research demographics before idly rattling off stuff about hype-driven TV specials. I didn’t know the the point of How to Dance in Ohio is to raise awareness/benefit autistic children. Now that I do, well, I wish it only the best. 
If I had to pick one play of the bunch to watch, however, it’d probably be And Juliet.
My CBS affiliate didn’t cover the parade this year. Interestingly enough one of my local channels (which is not Spanish language) did have the Telemundo broadcast.
tofor - Hey, thanks for coming through for us! I’ve never been convinced that these videos are a huge improvement (only one camera, limited video quality, lots of white noise, no helpful explanations), but it’s always cool to have the view on the street with no commercials. I always seem to have trouble finding these for some reason, so definitely most grateful! 
I know that I’m old and out of touch with the world in general because I like marching bands and (apparently) nobody else does. The media covering parades think the only thing bands are good for is to allow for commercial breaks and short interviews with people in whom I’m not interested. The network bozos will happily stop everything and take ten minutes to show me an overly rehearsed and carefully orchestrated song and dance routine from the revival of “Broadway Babes of 1937.” They won’t show me 45 uninterrupted seconds of a decent marching band doing their thing.
I’m with you; I like the marching bands as well.
The performance area on 34th St is much smaller than a football field. Can a 500-person marching band realistically do the cool stuff in that limited space that they can do in a football field?
As someone who was in marching band for four years in college, I totally agree. We played halftime shows at two Minnesota Vikings games, and were lucky if we had five seconds of TV coverage, usually the flag team (which we all know weren’t really part of the band). Sigh.
This thread made me remember this most excellent thread, featuring @beowulff and an anonymous Doper:
No, of course not. I just want to see them march and play. I love the bagpipe bands, the brass/military bands, high school and college bands, etc.
I don’t need to see struggling actors stop the whole parade to lip-synch to some show they’re doing.
I’m glad you remembered that thread!
It was a wonderful experience that will always be a high point in my life.