Sunny Skies Brighten 2016 WRAL Raleigh Christmas Parade

Mother Nature pulled out her sunniest skies for the 2016 WRAL Raleigh Christmas Parade on Saturday, November 17, 2016. For the 43^rd consecutive year, WRAL-TV broadcast the parade live to viewers around the Triangle. WRAL-TV Director of Local Programming Phyllis Parish Howard once again head up the station’s team alongside WRAL-TV Producer Randy Mews. Numerous members of the WRAL engineering crew teamed up with staffers from the news side of the Big 5 to share the floats, sights and sounds of the holidays.

Parish was full of praise for the tag team of WRAL-TV and Shop Local Raleigh, the presenting sponsor of the parade:

Our WRAL-TV engineers make the technical set up and execution for a live parade broadcast look so easy, but it certainly is not! They are meticulous with every audio/video detail, even down to the redundancy plan. Their technical expertise pays off, big time, for the WRAL team and our viewers watching at home. And speaking of viewers, not only did the parade broadcast win the time period by a big margin, it was the highest rated program (6.9 rating) for the day on any channel in our market!

Everyone loves a parade and today’s was no exception thanks to Shop Local Raleigh Executive Director Jennifer Martin. She did a great job planning/organizing the WRAL Raleigh Christmas Parade! Jen, Pamela Wimbush-Cady and the Shop Local Raleigh team kept the units moving smoothly which helped WRAL deliver our best broadcast in years. Big kudos to producer Randy Mews for his detailed planning, leadership, and to our entire production team for an excellent job from start to finish!

See photos and watch the parade by going to WRAL.com and entering the keyword ‘parade‘.

This is the 43rd consecutive year that WRAL-TV broadcast the event. Watch a replay of the parade on Christmas Eve at noon on WRAL2 and Christmas Day at noon on WRAL-TV.

Thanks to WRAL-TV’s Phyllis Parish, Brian Shrader, Kelly Riner, Keith Baker, Debra Morgan, Randy Mews, WRAL-FM’s Two Men & a Mom, and NMG’s Kathy Hanrahan for these capcom photos.