Sweep Stakes

by John Cook

Perhaps you’ve noticed. George W. Bush certainly did last month, when the networks chose to cut him off midphrase during his April 28 press conference. Sorry for the interruption, Mr. President, but there are more important things than Social Security. It is, after all, sweeps.

We used to know what to expect from sweeps, those four-week periods in February, May, and November when the networks engaged in a gaudy orgy of excess and self-promotion in a manic attempt to lure viewers. We always expected it to be a self-lacerating binge-and-purge bacchanal of “very special” episodes, “can’t miss” finales, and “explosive” newsmagazine stories, a perfect time for programmers to temporarily go insane enough to televise the "home videos" of Britney Spears and Kevin Federline. It served as penance for those of us who watch Lost or Arrested Development or 60 Minutes and somehow forget that we're consumers of an essentially down-market medium. With sweeps, the network overlords reminded us that we are, like our Extreme Makeover–watching brethren, just lowly television viewers after all. During sweeps we were told to shut up, grab a gallon of ice cream, sit down on the couch, and learn to like it when ABC News spends a minute on Iraq during its nightly newscast and follows it with a full prime-time hour probing whether Paula Abdul hit on a guy she met at work.

We thought it was the price we had to pay for free TV.

But it turns out all this icky pageantry has very little to do with us after all. Owing to a rather arcane change in the way Nielsen Media Research measures viewing, there is a new blue state/red state divide, and its name is sweeps. If you live in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, or a growing number of the top 10 television markets, the sweeps extravaganza is no longer aimed at you, and actually has very little to do with you. It’s aimed at the heartland hayseeds in Indianapolis and Birmingham.

Here’s why: Sweeps have always been about gathering demographic data on who’s watching what shows in local markets. And demographics, not households, are the currency of ad sales. Until just last year, during sweeps Nielsen would send diaries to individual viewers and ask them to record their viewing habits, providing local stations and advertisers with data on what color they are, how much money they make, and what they watch. Stations were stuck selling those numbers until the next sweeps came along. So the $18.4 billion local TV advertising market depended almost entirely on who was watching which stations in February, May, and November. Even though the networks’ national ad sales teams didn’t sell based on sweeps numbers, since national demographic ratings come out every day, the affiliates lived or died by those numbers.

Enter the Local People Meter. Nielsen began rolling out LPMs, which measure local demographic data, in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago last year, and by early next year LPMs will be installed in each of the top 10 markets. LPMs render sweeps obsolete for the roughly 30 percent of the nation that lives in the top 10 markets. February, May, and November are just like all the other months when you have these machines. But the remaining 70 percent of the country — aka, the hinterlands — still relies on sweeps, so the networks continue to be forced by anxious affiliates to deliver those big audiences right about now.

“We need to help our stations,” says one CBS programming executive. “I can feel sweeps becoming an anachronism, but they still bang on us.”

But if it’s only the smaller markets doing the banging, what sort of sweeps programming do you think we might see?

How about a miniseries about Elvis? Or maybe the season finale of a series about Biblical prophecy? The Daytime Emmy Awards? Hey, how about some NASCAR? Maybe the Academy of Country Music Awards?

Of course, there’s no shortage of quality sweeps stunts that will satisfy those of us who live in states willing to teach evolution in public schools. The season finales of Lost and Desperate Housewives will appease us. But aside from the sheer inertia left over from decades of the sweeps mentality, there’s just no rationale anymore for seeking more viewers in May than in April and June unless you’re in Raleigh, NC, or Boise, ID. So when Dr. Phil shows up unbidden on your TV talking childhood trauma with Pat O'Brien on CBS, just blame your cousin in Cincinnati.