According to Nielsen, the Macy's Day Parade has drawn a steady viewership of about 30 million households over the last 20 years. The reason I'm posting this more than anything is because 1991 and '92 were two of the highest-rated years and I specifically remember making a point of watching the parade those years.
I graduated from highschool at that time and many of my friends and I made a point of watching the Macy's Day Parade for whatever reason. Some have said that our generation (Gen-X, I believe) has a crippling problem with nostalgia, and I've often wondered if that is truly the case (note that I watched Thanksgiving episodes of Roseanne and Cheers, as well as several episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 as part of my holiday festivities, so I may be a bit blinded on this point), but I think it was a case of nostalgia during those years; I believe we knew we were heading into The Real World and were hungry for some of the childhood comfort the Macy's Day Parade provided.
But there's another reason I'm writing this: The holiday season came and went pretty quickly this year. Halloween was fun and lasted a minute, but Christmas is nearly here already! It's almost as if we skipped Thanksgiving altogether. Sit-coms and TV shows in general don't do as much with the holidays as they used to, and it would be hard to tell if they did since viewership is so fractionated. TV no longer holds us together as a country, and it once ruled the holidays - it anticipated them, it delivered them, and it framed them. The Macy's Day Parade remains part of that tradition and people do still tune-in to watch it.
And all of this goes to prove my continued point: If you make it good, they will come.
You know what I'm saying.
You don't need all the gimmicks and hoopla if you have product people want. You have a generation that craves the connection to one another that we once had through pop-culture, and a younger generation who never really knew that connection and thus feel disconnected from not only one another, but the entire system. Everything is changing - except the corporations and industries that created this mess in the first place.
We have a need for community - at least in the Western world - and it has always been there. It was once fed by newspapers, then television, and now (to a lesser extent) the Web. The only thing along these lines that's really "died" in the last few hundred years was Vaudeville and in a certain way, the Internet has brought it back (through podcasts, blogs, and social networking); newspapers put themselves out of business and other periodicals are looking to do the same.
There is no reason to fight the Internet, and it won't be long before the Macy's Day Parade is drawing another 30 million viewers every year. That time will be when it is broadcast live online.
© C Harris Lynn, 2011
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