Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

The three-hour parade is held in Manhattan, ending outside Macy's Herald Square, and takes place from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Thanksgiving Day, and has been televised nationally on NBC since 1953.

[3][4] At this first parade, Santa was enthroned on the Macy's balcony at the 34th Street store entrance, where he was then crowned "King of the Kiddies".

The public backlash against such begging in the 1930s (when most Americans were struggling in the midst of the Great Depression) led to promotion of alternatives, including Macy's parade.

[12][13] The parade resumed in 1945 and became known nationwide shortly afterwards, having been prominently featured in the 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street, which included footage of the 1946 festivities.

Technical and logistical difficulties marred many of the early attempts to perform live music on moving stages, and in 1964, the parade began transitioning to lip sync.

[22][23][24] Mayor Rudy Giuliani formed a task force in response,[25] and numerous safety regulations were implemented the next year, including size restrictions that eliminated larger balloons such as the Cat in the Hat and the Pink Panther, the removal of lamppost arms on the parade route, and both physical training and lessons in balloon physics for handlers.

[26] During the 2005 parade, the M&M's balloon collided with a streetlight in Times Square; parts of the light fell on two sisters, who suffered minor injuries.

[31] Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, the 2020 parade was downsized and closed to the public—being filmed as a broadcast-only event in the Herald Square area.

Mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio stated that it will "[not be] a live parade, but something that will really give us that warmth and that great feeling we have on Thanksgiving day.

Some of the protesters wearing white jumpsuits covered in fake blood, glued themselves to the parade route at Sixth Avenue near 45th street.

[2]: 12  In 1931, aviation pioneer Clarence Chamberlin spotted a dragon balloon midair, decapitated it with a wingtip, and brought the remnants back to land, where he claimed a $25 award.

On the NBC telecast from in front of the flagship Macy's store on Broadway and 34th Street, the marching bands perform live music.

The cost to book the performers is covered by the floats' sponsors, who must also pay an entry fee to Macy's to participate in the parade.

[57] In November 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported that during negotiations to extend their broadcast contract for the parade and the Macy's Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular for ten additional years, NBC offered to pay Macy's an increased license fee of $60 million to continue carrying the parade telecast.

Starting with the parade's 2023 edition, when coverage was extended a half-hour earlier (to 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time from its longtime 10:00 start), the Thanksgiving edition of Today was reduced to only 90 minutes (similar to the network's 2017 decision to cut the program's Saturday broadcasts to that same length to accommodate live telecasts of Premier League soccer matches held during the mid-morning to midday hours in the U.S.).

During that period, their co-hosts included Mary Hart, Sandy Duncan, and Today colleagues Deborah Norville and Katie Couric.

In recent years, NBC's coverage has been hosted by Today anchors Matt Lauer (from 1998 to 2017), Meredith Vieira (from 2006 to 2010), Ann Curry (2011), Savannah Guthrie (since 2012) and Hoda Kotb (since 2018) as well as Today weather anchor Al Roker who usually joins the producers of the parade or the CEO of Macy's and special guests in the ribbon cutting ceremony.

In 2022, Dylan Dreyer filled in for Roker, who was recovering due to health complications involving blood clots,[62] while Kotb hosted the ribbon cutting ceremony segment when the parade reached Herald Square, rather than when it usually takes place in the Upper West Side.

Gary Halvorson (whose directorial work has centered primarily on sitcoms as well as selected television specials) directed the telecast from 1994 to 2018, succeeded by Ron de Moraes from 2019 to 2021.

While WDIV did carry the later tape-delayed broadcast from 2009 to 2019, local carriage of the live Macy's parade broadcast has been mostly sporadic (it aired locally on WADL from 2009 to 2016), even after the station began over-the-air digital telecasts, granting it the ability to televise the NBC telecast on a subchannel; as such, Detroit-area viewers often have to rely on nearby NBC affiliates out of Flint (WEYI), Lansing (WILX) and Toledo (WNWO) to watch the parade.

[63] From 2016 to 2019, Verizon produced a 360-degree virtual reality live telecast of the parade, with minimal commentary, made available through YouTube.

Although the parade committee can endorse an official broadcaster, the parade takes place on public streets, and therefore Macy's can only limit exclusivity of coverage of the event to directly within the area in front of the Herald Square store, and cannot restrict coverage through exclusive rights like sporting and other events that take place inside restricted-access venues.

However, the route now passes along the west side of the network's Black Rock headquarters building along Sixth Avenue (with the hosts stationed on a temporary tower platform at the Sixth/W.

CBS's unofficial coverage aired live in most time zones, allowing viewers to see the parade as much as two hours before the official NBC coverage aired in their area before Peacock nulled this advantage; until 2023, CBS broadcast the parade on delay on the West Coast, immediately after the Detroit Lions Thanksgiving game in the years when CBS would carry the Lions' traditional Thanksgiving game or at 9:00 a.m. local time in the years when they carried the Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving game.

CBS did not carry parade coverage in 2024,[70][71] as the network has been cutting expenses under its current Paramount Global ownership as part of its propsed merger with Skydance Media, which included the defection of its longtime specials Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to NBC, whose parent company owns the rights to both programs.

Past the El tracks, the parade proceeded east on 106th Street to Central Park West and turned south to terminate at Macy's flagship.

Another reason for implementing the route change is the city's subsequent transformation of Broadway into a pedestrian-only zone at Times Square.

[75][76] Balloon teams race through Columbus Circle due to higher winds in this flat area, making it a less desirable observation site.

New York City officials preview the parade route and try to eliminate as many potential obstacles as possible, including rotating overhead traffic signals out of the way.

Performers from the Orlando area are cast as various clowns, and the park used to invite guests to be "balloon handlers" for the parade.