A record number of people tuned in to watch this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving parade
Was it the deflating One Piece balloons? Or the chance to watch Al Roker shout quotes from Good Burger at Kenan & Kel?
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The Thanksgiving holiday may not have been all that rosy for movie theaters, but at least TV scored a win from it—if you consider a whole bunch of people tuning in to watch a giant Luffy from One Piece getting his hat destroyed by cruel nature, and Al Roker interrupting a live TV broadcast to yell Good Burger lines at Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell a win, at least.
This is per THR, which reports that Thursday’s broadcast of the Macy’s Day Thanksgiving Parade was the most viewed version of the annual event ever, with 28.5 million people apparently tuning in to view NBC’s broadcast of the event. Among other things, that makes the parade broadcast the single most-watched entertainment program of the year on linear TV. Not bad for the 97th iteration of this particular parade—especially since a decent chunk of the viewership was in the 18-49 demographic, who we do not typically think of as prime “looking at balloon types.”
Really, though, this year’s parade had everything: Political turmoil (as protestors of Israel’s treatment of Palestine managed to shut down the event for half an hour), plus a genuine balloon disaster, as a One Piece balloon got punctured by a tree branch, causing Monkey D. Luffy’s famed straw hat to get pretty Monkey D.-flated as it made its way along the route. And, most importantly, the bit where Al Roker—who was absent from last year’s parade due to health reasons—interrupted the conversation when Thompson and Mitchell drove by in their Good Burger-mobile to serenade them with songs and lines from their own work. (Roker is actually apparently in Good Burger 2, so this might be a bit of savvy cross-promotion…or an expression of Roker’s deep and genuine love of Good Burger as an enduring work of American art.)
10 Comments
Monkey D.-flatedSolid
That wasn’t the only balloon that deflated in this year’s parade…
I heard they were trying to repair the balloon but no one could find the One Piece that was missing
They should have just patched the leak with some gum . . . gum.
I didn’t watch. If I want to see a fifty foot Spider-Man, I’ll just go into my Rec Room, thank you.
I wanted to watch, but the streaming option was basically non-existant.I was ready to watch on tape at noon, after Santa crossed the finish line like last year. But neither Peacock nor Hulu posted it. Peacock did a live-stream twice and then took it away.So i spent the middle of the day watchimg Roseanne and Frasier Thanksgiving episodes..
Wimpy Kid also had problems. Unless that deflated scrotum hand is what makes him wimpy.
Wimpy Kid? I thought that was Big Nate. This is more embarrassing than that time I showed up to a Thanksgiving parade with my scrotum hand hanging out.
Like the National Dog Show, the parade is great Thanksgiving television — an easy thing to half-watch while you’re also doing something else. It’s not distracting enough to interfere with you cooking or catching up with your uncle, but does provide constant things to talk about to facilitate conversation (that balloon is deflating, that dog is obviously better than the other dog). And the parade is on EARLY, when there’s basically nothing else on.I’d be surprised if the NFL hasn’t considered doing one of its European games on Thanksgiving, since you could capture the same morning audience. The logistics would be tough — it’s hard to get teams that played the previous Sunday ready to play when you also have to fly them across the Atlantic. And I’m sure there would be some pushback to sending a bunch of players away on Thanksgiving weekend, to a country that doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving.
I watched some of the parade with my mom while we were preparing food for dinner, and it was pretty fun. Around the time Luffy showed up my brother arrived to help out and we had the singular experience of explaining the overwhelming international appeal of One Piece to our parents.