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Ratings: "Law and Order"-NBC dropped 800,000 viewers last week

These balloons and floats (and Santa Claus) have attracted more attention in six of the past eight years

Happy Thanksgiving, WrapPRO readers! Before you stuff your face and deliver tryptophan, we also have a rating bar for subscribers (hopefully) to thank you.

This week, we will properly check the ratings of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and the prime time Turkey Day NFL game: both are large TV shows on NBC. But you may be surprised, which property usually gets the turkey leg of the broadcast network, the award established by John Madden in 1989 to recognize the most valuable player in the Thanksgiving prime time game? In fact, in six of the past eight years, the parade attracted more audiences when both were broadcast.

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We regressed our viewing time machine ten years from the upcoming Thanksgiving Day, when the 2012 parade (22.4 million viewers) exceeded the prime-time NFL action (19.2 million) with a total number of 3.2 million viewers-New England The Patriots are in the New York Jets.

In the second year, the big balloons and floats had a greater lead (4.1 million spectators), and the Pittsburgh Steelers of the Baltimore Ravens topped the list with 25.2 million spectators over 21.1 million spectators. That was the parade with the highest ratings on our list.

Football fans don’t worry: the prime-time pigskin game will grow again in the next two years, while the number of parades is declining. In 2015, the Chicago Bears of the Green Bay Packers attracted more attention, attracting an impressive 27.8 million spectators. But this will be the last year of the "Sunday Night Football" special (because it was on Thursday night) defeating the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

In the next two years, football sank and the parade soared. See all charts in the table below. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak in the Baltimore Ravens, the 2020 Thanksgiving prime time match was cancelled and they will once again face the Steelers.

As you can see, NFL games are more unstable than parade numbers. Part of the reason is that the parade to Manhattan’s 34th Street and Herald Square always ends in the same way, with the arrival of Santa Claus, and football either hit the nail on the head or broke out in the third quarter.

For example, the high-scoring game between the Bears and the Packers in 2015 came to the end. Chicago blocked Green Bay from the 8-yard line with 22 seconds left in the game with a fourth and goal position. The Bears defeated their longtime NFC North opponent 17-13. The second half of the rainy game was very slow, with only 3 points between the two teams.

The Thanksgiving prime-time game broadcast under the banner of NBC's "Sunday Night Football" is not actually the most watched NFL game during this holiday. This distinction belongs to the noon (Eastern Time) game, which often has more than 30 million total viewers. Early afternoon (ET) games usually also beat prime time games-but not always. Think about it: no one is sleeping, everyone needs an excuse to avoid actually talking with their extended family members.

This Thanksgiving Day, the Bears will visit the Detroit Lions on Fox at 12:30 pm Eastern Time/9:30 am Pacific Time, and the Las Vegas Raiders will travel to the Dallas Cowboys to participate in CBS at 4:30 pm / 1:30 PM Pacific time game. In prime time, the Buffalo Bills played away against the New Orleans Saints. NBC's kick-off time is set at 8:20 pm Eastern Time / 5:20 pm Pacific Time.

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is broadcast on NBC and Telemundo in all time zones from 9 am to noon. For the first time in history, fans can live stream events on Peacock.

The Cowboys game will be the highlight of Thanksgiving, but in fact, there are no losers here. Okay, maybe it's a turkey.

TV Editor • tony.maglio@thewrap.com • Twitter: @tonymaglio

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