A 75-year Los Angeles tradition came to an end Wednesday as officials disclosed that last year's Hollywood Christmas Parade was the final one.
Rising costs and shrinking revenues are to blame for the cancellation, leaders of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce said.
"This is a very difficult thing for us to have to do," said Jeff Briggs, chairman of the chamber's board of directors. "We're disappointed and sad. But we're out of the parade business."
The business group, supported by member merchants' dues, lost about $100,000 in staging the 2006 parade. Losses were expected to double this year, Briggs said.
Begun in 1928 to draw Los Angeles residents into Hollywood shops and stores, the parade had struggled in recent years to attract celebrity participants and a national TV audience. Fees from broadcast advertising helped finance the $1 million event.
The parade had been on the verge of being canceled several times in the past, officials revealed Wednesday.
"We struggled for 10 years to keep it alive. We were always holding out hope," said chamber President Leron Gubler.
Starting in 1998, the chamber labored to hammer out annual television contracts that would promise celebrities the exposure they were seeking while producing advertising dollars to cover parade and telecast costs.
For the last three years KTLA-TV Channel 5 was the only station willing to pay the chamber a broadcast fee. The station, which -- like the Los Angeles Times -- is owned by the Tribune Co., upgraded the parade telecast's production and distributed it to other company-owned stations, including "superstation" WGN-TV of Chicago. The parade was accessible to about 80% of the country's viewers.
The parade telecast won a local Emmy for best live event of 2005. "KTLA was going to televise it again this year, but they were going to have to cut their production costs" by using fewer cameras and less nighttime lighting," Briggs said.
Such changes would have discouraged actors and other entertainers from participating in subsequent parades, he said. "You can't get celebrities without TV. You can't get TV without celebrities."
Longtime parade producer Johnny Grant, a former radio personality who now serves as Hollywood's honorary mayor and the head of its Walk of Fame, said he was heartbroken.
"When that last float went down the street last year, half my life went with it," he said. "But L.A.'s changing. America's changing. The public has many more entertainment platforms now."
