So we keep family tradition alive by watching Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade on NBC. The coverage is the perfect shill for the Broadway shows and various lip-synced, Autotuned voices.
So who gets to sit under the shadow of Macy’s, stare into the TV cameras and be utterly bored? Are they Macy’s employees? Macy’s executives and their families? Macy’s heavyweight suppliers and families? Since the location is geared for the TV audience, why would you want to sit there and see the backs of the performers?
Same question here: the parade is always the same (except with some new balloons). Look-there’s Snoopy!
It’s pretty boring-except when high winds cause problems.
I went to the parade as a kid. Seeing it live is a lot better than seeing it on TV especially today. We watched a bit, but there was a minute of actual parade and ten minutes of bubble headed Victoria’s Secret models shilling a show and a country song inside the David Letterman theater having nothing to do with the parade. Not to mention the announcers having to read poorly written dribble.
My wife said she felt sorry for people whose kids got to be in a band, were watching, but never saw any bands because of blatant shilling.
Parade good. Coverage bad.
They should tie the person responsible to a balloon and let him float away over the Atlantic, if you ask me.
Back when we lived in NYC, we decided to see the parade live one year. For one thing it was bitter cold. For another thing, men with their little kids on their shoulders push their way up front against the barricades, blocking the view of anyone behind them. Well, you can still look up and see the underside of the big balloons as they pass by. And of course the parade stands still more often than it moves.
It’s like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. People should experience it a maximum of one time, so you know never to return.
Our four-year old granddaughter had heard about it and wanted to see it, but was very quickly bored to distraction. As were we all. The ratio of commercial time to actual parade time was about 50:1, or thereabouts.
Hey now, I’ve gone to the parade many times (only in years when the weather is good) and I always have a blast! It’s the OPPOSITE of New Years Eve in Time s Square (which I tell EVERYBODY to stay the hell away from, and the ones who don’t listen spend the next year telling me I was 100% right!). You don’t even need to get there THAT early. I usually arrive around 7:30 and go to one of the side streets in the upper 60s. You won’t get front row, but the balloons and floats are high enough up that you don’t really need to be.
I DVR’ed it, and then waited for an hour or more before starting to watch it, so I could skip through the many commercials, promos for NBC shows and annoying musical performances. I was mostly interested in the marching bands and floats. I noticed that they only briefly showed some groups, like the mounted unit from Parks Department, the NYPD marching band and mounted unit. I wonder what else they didn’t show.
I asked on another Thanksgiving thread, and I’ll also ask here, “do the bands get an appearance fee?”
Otherwise, what is the real motivation for spending tens of thousands of dollars to clothe, train, transport, house and feed a couple hundred people so they can be seen for 10 seconds on national TV?
I think the OP is asking specifically about the people who have to sit there and watch the Broadway show performances from a bad vantage point. If so, my guess is that it’s mostly or entirely Macy’s employees, who can at least be theoretically expected not to do something stupid on camera.
Well, the schools are already paying for the band uniforms and the training costs (mostly the band director’s salary). And my impression is that high school and college bands compete aggressively for the few slots available at high-profile events like the Macy’s or the Tournament of Roses parades. I imagine that it’s something the kids will remember for a long time. As for the costs involved, I found an article about a high school band from Arizona that was in the parade. The article says, “Sending 180 band members to New York, plus staff, chaperones and a truckload of gear costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. The $1,400 per student cost sounds to sound more of a bargain when you look at what’s included. Round-trip airfare, ground transportation, New York sightseeing and a Broadway show.” So it’s not just appearing in the parade but also includes some tourism.
That was the CBS coverage. The “real” coverage was on NBC. Since NBC is the official show, they broadcast the bands, balloons, floats and performances that happened in front of Macy’s as each thing arrived there. CBS couldn’t do that, but they had to have some big names to advertise as being part of their coverage, hence their cutting away from the parade to the other things, like Lady Antebellum performing in the Ed Sullivan Theater. This also had a time warping effect in that parade things that passed by the CBS location started out being seen on TV ahead of NBC but as the morning went on, they started getting behind NBC as they (CBS) tape delayed the parade passing their location to show the non-parade stuff.
My wife marched with her small-town Vermont high school marching band in the Macy’s T’giving Day parade in the early Eighties, and they did a lot of fundraising to cover the costs of the trip (car washes, candy sales, bake sales, etc.). They did some touristy stuff while in NYC, but didn’t have all that much time for it. The band had to be in position, ready to march, at an ungodly hour on Thanksgiving morning, and it was bitter cold - her lips almost froze to her flute, she remembers. Still, it was a great experience and she’s glad she did it.
I hadn’t watched it in years, but my kids really wanted to this year so we had it on. I was pretty amazed - was the parade always just an extended series of ads for corporations and Broadway shows, or has it evolved into that? Every float we saw was for some big conglomerate or another while the hosts talked about the sponsor’s fantastic products. Every ten minutes or so there was a balloon.
Anyway, my kids got bored after an hour which was fine with me.
And many of the balloons themselves were promoting major companies or brands (Snoopy, Spongebob Squarepants, Buzz Lightyear, Hello Kitty, Pillsbury Doughboy, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Spiderman, Ronald McDonald, Pokemon, Sonic the Hedgehog, Papa Smurf, etc.). So, yes, the prarade is a series of promotions. But that’s what the parade is about; it’s meant to promote sales at the department store. It’s a bigger deal now that Macy’s is a national chain.
And by thousands of other people on the parade route.
The kids did lots of other things while they were there.
My high school band went to Hawaii every 3rd year to participate in a big parade in Honolulu, and everyone spent a week there. I ended up not going (long story), and it was a decision I have NEVER regretted, because most of the people who went had a miserable time. :eek:
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