Despite the challenge of cord-cutting, Thanksgiving TV broadcasts attracted record-breaking viewership.

• The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and football notched impressive TV ratings during Thanksgiving festivities.
• NBC and CBS both reported record-breaking ratings for their Thanksgiving broadcasts.
• The industry is facing challenges with cord-cutting, but success is still possible at a crucial moment for traditional TV.

This year, media companies had a lot to be thankful for due to high Thanksgiving TV viewership.

A range of events over the holiday broke ratings records.

During the 97th annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, NBC recorded an all-time high of 28.5 million viewers, representing a 6% increase from the previous year, according to Variety's report on Friday.

Despite the growing trend of consumers cutting the cord and moving away from linear TV, more than two-thirds of the parade audience, approximately 22.3 million viewers, still tuned in via traditional TV, according to Variety.

Football was another ratings monster over the holiday.

The Dallas Cowboys' Thanksgiving victory over the Washington Commanders was the most-watched program on any network since Super Bowl LVII, with 41.8 million viewers, according to CBS. The game peaked at nearly 44.3 million viewers and had a 31% increase in viewership from the previous year, although it came in about 500,000 viewers lower than the Cowboys-Giants matchup in the same timeslot last year.

CBS did not reveal ratings for Paramount+, but it announced that it had its highest-streamed NFL regular season game on the platform.

The 12:30 p.m. ET Fox's Packers-Lions matchup on Thanksgiving Day was the most watched game ever in that timeslot, with 33.7 million viewers, up 6% from the previous year. Unlike its competitors, Fox does not have a dedicated streaming platform for its main programming.

On Friday, NBC Sports announced that its coverage of the San Francisco 49ers' victory over the Seattle Seahawks was the second-most watched Thanksgiving primetime game in history, surpassed only by the 2015 Bears-Packers matchup. The broadcast drew an average of 26.9 million viewers across NBC's platforms, based on fast national Nielson data.

NBC Sports' most-streamed primetime NFL Thanksgiving game was also the game led by its platform Peacock, according to a statement made by NBC Sports on Friday.

The NFL announced that the average viewership across all three Thanksgiving Day games was 34.1 million, breaking the record for highest viewership on this day.

The New York Jets and Miami Dolphins matchup on Amazon's Prime Video platform on the day after Thanksgiving was broadcasted for $100 million. This is in addition to the $1 billion that Amazon already pays annually to broadcast NFL's Thursday Night Football. The company also tried to use the NFL broadcast to boost sales on Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year. However, ratings for the Friday game have not been released yet.

Patrick Crakes, a sports media consultant and former Fox Sports executive, stated that it makes sense that the Friday games may not perform as well as the Thursday games because they are on a different platform and day. However, he emphasized that this does not diminish the value of the Friday games.

Crakes stated that Amazon's $100 million investment in broadcasting the Friday game is not intended to be recouped in a straightforward manner. Instead, it serves as a marketing tool to increase the value of other areas, such as Prime subscribers or retail sales.

According to Kevin Krim, CEO of EDO Inc., the Thanksgiving broadcasts were successful for the advertising market.

According to Krim, the ratings from Nielsen were good and the ad performance was strong, as he stated on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Monday.

“Consumers responded very aggressively” to big discount messages, Krim said.

The success of Thanksgiving ratings on traditional TV is crucial during a challenging period for the industry, as consumers increasingly cut the cord. However, the data shows that streaming and linear TV can both achieve strong ratings, indicating that the two are not mutually exclusive.

Crakes stated that the NFL's location is well-known to everyone, demonstrating the enduring power of traditional TV. When content is presented in the appropriate context, it outperforms all other options. Although its decline is inevitable, this highlights why it will persist.

Crakes stated that the record-breaking ratings on Thursday demonstrate how streaming and linear mediums can coexist, despite their potential conflict.

Instead of fragmenting cable and streaming offerings, companies could offer a complementary performance that fits into predictions for a unified pricing model.

Earlier this month, Liberty Media Chairman John Malone stated that he anticipates the ad-supported version of streaming platforms being bundled with cable subscriptions because cable and streaming are closely linked.

Linear and streaming viewing will continue to coexist and may be reintegrated into a bundled package, as Crakes concurred.

The challenge is to determine how to monetize the platform. We have not yet found a solution, but it is crucial to recognize that linear and streaming are complementary and that linear can decline while streaming can increase. However, for the long term, they must work together.

Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.