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We haven't watched the Thanksgiving Day parade on television for probably a solid two decades, but when we glanced at this morning's papers we began to regret avoiding the broadcast this year. There was, it seems, a "Holi-Daze" "Lights Out" at the parade yesterday, a "narrowly avoided" disaster that was caused when a giant (and, apparently, angry) M&M careened into a lamppost in Times Square and sent a 30-pound lighting fixture falling onto two sisters watching the parade below.

Both are fine, but the papers' accounts make clear it was quite a dramatic event when it happened. We found ourselves wishing we'd been watching the live NBC broadcast so we could have seen it for ourselves, rather than merely relying on the eyewitness accounts in the local papers. We were sure seasoned newsmen like Katie Couric, Matt Lauer, and Al Roker — the parade broadcast's hosts — would have kept us posted on what was happening, and we had no doubt a top-notch news organization like NBC would have found some good pictures to broadcast.

Of course, we would have been wrong. The Times reports:

[W]hen the time came in the tightly scripted three-hour program for the M&Ms' appearance, NBC weaved in tape of the balloon crossing the finish line at last year's parade - even as the damaged balloon itself was being dragged from the accident scene. At 11:47 a.m., as an 11-year-old girl and her 26-year-old sister were being treated for injuries, the parade's on-air announcers - Katie Couric, Matt Lauer and Al Roker - kept up their light-hearted repartee from Herald Square, where the parade ends.

"Will these classic candymen get out of this delicious dilemma?" Mr. Roker asked, referring not to the accident but to the premise of the attraction, a red M&M's attempt to save his yellow counterpart, who had been blown from the basket of a hot-air balloon.

It's America's first morning-news family, folks.

While Others Reported Accident, NBC Stuck to Sunny Re-Broadcast of Last Year's M&M's [NYT]
Related:
 Parade Hit By a New 'Blow' [NYP]
Again! Light Falls on Parade [NYDN]
Parade Balloon Hits Light Pole, Injuring Two [NYT]