Friday, November 26, 2010

Just show me the parade already!

Yesterday morning, after eating breakfast and commandeering the TV remote back from my children, I switched over to NBC to watch what I thought was supposed to be the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I had fond memories of watching this parade as a child and seeing the giant floats and balloons move down the streets of New York City. Once the commercials were over and the program returned, I saw Matt Lauer with Meredith Vieira sitting in the middle of what appeared to be a hundred or so pots of mums. They were announcing the next segment which was some Broadway production number of some kind. Where's the parade I thought to myself? I noticed a timer in the upper right hand corner of the screen indicating the parade's arrival at some square. So the parade was happening somewhere, they just weren't showing it. After the Broadway number was over, there was a brief glimpse of the parade before they went to commercial. After the next set of commercials were over, I was greeted by Al Roker, who was somewhere by the parade (I could see a marching band over his shoulder), interviewing someone about their upcoming Broadway Show performances. Why can't they just show the parade, I thought again? After the interview, we went back to Matt and Meredith who were previewing the next Broadway number. Who cares about these song and dance numbers? Where is the parade already? To my amazement and chagrin, the parade was not actually shown (other than behind Al Roker or on a cut to commercial) until 9:54 AM! Virtually a whole hour went by of what was billed as the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, without actually showing the parade at all! How could this be? I guess that in order to see the Macy's Parade anymore, you have to actually go to New York and watch it in person!

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