[conservative in nyc]

NBC can treat the parade as an entertainment show, if they wish. But NBC's entertainment division ought to hire someone other than NBC's newscasters to present the parade if they want to treat it as an entertainment show, show year-old footage (even with attribution) and not report the real news of what was happening. The way NBC did it, Katie and Matt looked like fools and lost their credibility among adults.

[Sir_Ed]

I think what prolly happened was M&M paid NBC to jazz up the rendition of the M&M float, (witness the obviously-scripted comments by the Brainless Duo about how "M&M melts in your mouth, not in your hand!"-commentators at a parade would never use such scripted tagline banter to describe an M&M float) and there was a provision in their contract to never speak ill of any paying sponsors.

So, when the ballon crashed, they had to stick to what their contract read and parrot the silly lines of "Due to wind conditions, we're using footage filmed earlier of the M&M's float" and proceed to describe how delicious M&M's are.

Ed