It might be the kookiest three and a half hours in all of television.
On Thursday, when the “Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade” returns to NBC, the broadcast will be fueled by, among others, nearly a dozen marching bands, the Rockettes, Al Roker, Snoopy, Cynthia Erivo, Cole Escola from the Broadway show “Oh, Mary!” and Santa Claus.
And yet, if history is any guide, the parade will draw more viewers than the Oscars, the Yankees-Dodgers World Series or the most popular New Year’s Eve telecast.
Though it has been an annual staple in American living rooms and kitchens since the 1950s, the parade became the most-watched entertainment show in the United States only over the past three years.
Other than some sporting events or marquee N.F.L. games — which can draw more than 30 million viewers — maintaining an audience, or even growing it, is a rarity in television these days. Award shows like the Oscars, Grammys and Emmys have had seesawing ratings in recent years that are well short of their heights from a decade or two ago.
The parade, on the other hand, has delivered virtually the same audience since the late 1980s — 20 million viewers each year, give or take. Last year, when viewership from an encore telecast and the Peacock streaming service was tallied up, the parade audience ballooned to over 28 million viewers, a new high.
“It totally defies gravity,” Jen Neal, NBC’s executive vice president of live events and specials, said in an interview.
Entertainment programs have struggled in recent years as more and more viewers abandon traditional television and migrate to streaming. Just last week, Comcast, NBCUniversal’s parent, announced it was spinning off much of its declining cable business into a separate company.
Comcast is, however, keeping the NBC broadcast network — in part because of live events like the parade.
The telecast has plenty going for it, television executives said. A totally captive audience, on a day millions of people stay home, certainly helps. So does its role kick-starting a holiday season when people are (generally) in a good mood. The element of a live production — Will it rain? Will it freeze? Will it be too windy for the balloons? — provides a jolt of unpredictability.
There also seems to be a deep well of nostalgia for a production that, more or less, looks roughly the same year after year: lots of floats, plenty of balloons, a dozen or so performances, the same opening act (the Tom Turkey float) and the same kicker (Santa).
“Those iconic moments have been part of our history and legacy since the earliest days,” said Will Coss, an executive producer of the parade. “We’re intentional about that. We care about that.”
Over more than three hours, each segment of the telecast rotates through five to 10 minutes of performances before heading into the next commercial break. The segments are “perfect for our social media-trained brains,” said Sarah Unger, a founder of Cultique, a consulting firm that advises companies on changing cultural norms.
“No segment is too long, and there’s spectacle in spades,” she said.
That is not an accident.
“The great thing about the parade is that there are so many elements, there’s something for every viewer,” said Bill Bracken, a producer of the telecast for more than 30 years. “It’s something we explain in our ‘coming up’ bumpers. Let people know, ‘Hey, maybe this wasn’t your favorite, but coming up next is this.’”
Nor is it afflicted with any political baggage. When award show ratings began cratering, some television executives blamed preachy political monologues and acceptance speeches for turning off swaths of Middle America. A viewer of the parade, on the other hand, could be forgiven for forgetting that presidential elections exist, or even what year it is.
“It kind of sits outside of time and culture — it’s like this stand-alone thing,” Ms. Unger said. “It’s separate from all the entertainment industry woes and the culture wars. It’s like going into an alternate universe.”
Producers of the show have long tried to appeal to a wide audience. Performances from Broadway shows are intended, in part, for families that “don’t have the opportunity to visit New York,” Ms. Neal, the NBC executive, said.
And the steady procession of high school and college marching bands from states like West Virginia, South Dakota, Arkansas and Texas also adds “that slice of America straight out of the heartland that we really, really want to make it a truly national event,” Savannah Guthrie, the “Today” anchor who hosts the telecast, once said in a retrospective about the parade.
(Mr. Bracken, the producer, said that, in the past, the telecast had gleefully highlighted when band members had taken a plane for the first time to participate in the parade.)
The ratings are evenly distributed across the country. Over the last two years, liberal enclaves like New York, Baltimore and New Haven are among the highest rated local markets for the parade, but so are major markets in dependably red states like Indiana, Florida, Ohio and Missouri.
The across-the-board appeal is of high interest to advertisers. Last year, NBC charged sponsors an average of $865,000 for 30 seconds of commercial time, and this year it’s charging nearly $900,000, according to Guideline, an advertising data firm. That’s a higher rate than most live entertainment events, including the Grammy Awards, the Emmys, “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” or the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting, Guideline said. Only the Oscars command a bigger ad rate.
Macy’s and NBC are in negotiations about a new contract for broadcast rights for the parade. The amount that NBC pays Macy’s to televise the event is expected to go up, according to a person familiar with the talks. The Wall Street Journal previously reported on the discussions.
And a higher rights fee is no surprise given the parade’s ascent.
“It’s entertainment doing exactly what entertainment is supposed to do,” Ms. Unger said. “It’s uniting, it’s escapist, it’s easy to access. All the previously major monoculture events have struggled to live up to that promise in the last few years.”
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