Television coverage More than 44 million people typically watch the parade on television on an annual basis. It was first televised locally in New York City in 1939 as an experimental broadcast on NBC's W2XBS (now WNBC). No television stations broadcast the parade in 1940 or 1941, but local broadcasts resumed when the parade returned in 1945 after the wartime suspension."Radio Today" (with television listings), The New York Times, November 22, 1945, p. 36. The parade began its network television appearances on CBS in 1948, the year that major, regular television network programming began."Radio and Television", The New York Times, November 21, 1949, p. 44. NBC has been the official broadcaster of the event since 1953. However, CBS (which has a studio in Times Square) also carries unauthorized coverage as The Thanksgiving Day Parade on CBS. The parade committee can endorse an official broadcaster as the parade takes place in public (however, they cannot award exclusive rights as other events, such as sporting events, which take place inside restricted-access stadiums, have the authority to do so). The rerouting of the parade starting from 2012 (see below) moved the parade out of the view of CBS's cameras and thus made it significantly more difficult for the network to cover the parade. 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. 53rd St. corner of the building), and CBS nevertheless continues to cover the parade as before. Since 2003, the parade has been broadcast in Spanish on the sister network of NBCUniversal (Telemundo) hosted by María Celeste Arrarás from 2003 to 2006. The parade won nine Emmy Awards for outstanding achievements in special event coverage since 1979. Since 2020, the parade also provided audio description via a second audio program channel. At first, the telecasts were only an hour long. The telecast then expanded to two hours in 1961, reduced to 90 minutes in 1962, reverted to two hours in 1965, and expanded to all three hours of the parade in 1969. The event began to be broadcast in color in 1960. NBC airs the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade live in the Eastern Time Zone as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as the network uses broadcast feeds from that time zone (which due to time differences