Commentary : TV’s Month of Sweeps: Who’ll Stop the Game?

How could a mother take the life of her own child? Tonight, Barbara Nevins goes behind bars to hear from women who’ve murdered their children. And you’ll see shocking undercover footage as a mother actually tries to smother her 6-month-old baby.

--Newspaper ad for WCBS-TV’s sweeps series, “Moms Who Kill . . . Because anything can happen in New York”

February is kaput and so are New York’s “Moms Who Kill” and the West Coast version, KCBS-TV’s “Parents Who Kill.” Gone too are NBC’s “Noble House,” KABC-TV’s “Phone Sex” (is your child safe?) and the sometimes super, sometimes so-so Winter Olympics as presented by ABC.

It’s March and TV is back from the Twilight Zone. Newscasters are covering the news again and chances are greatly diminished that a favorite sitcom will be pre-empted by a super spectacular sweeps special.

Why does TV go berserk during sweeps?

Entertainment programmers and broadcast journalists alike scratch the backs of their heads and shrug. And mutter phrases like “. . . necessary evil” and “. . . it’s always been that way.”

But, in the end, it’s all an uncomfortable mystery to the very people who program the tube.

“If I were an advertiser, I would be concerned about buying time on a phony premise. I don’t understand the sweeps at all,” said Reinhold Weege, executive producer of “Night Court.”

Weege is far from alone. The most frequent reason given to 10 Calendar reporters who interviewed more than 100 TV professionals for 30 articles on the February sweeps? “Everybody else in the business does it, so we have to do it too.”

The very people responsible for putting sex, psychics and sushi on the set each sweeps period can’t seem to explain when it first happened or why they continue to do it.

In a media center like Los Angeles, sweeps programming is doubly absurd. The advertisers who broadcasters try to impress with big audience ratings know sweeps are an aberration, according to Harvey Spiegel, senior vice president for research and marketing of the Television Bureau of Advertising.

“In most of the markets around the country, all we have is the (sweeps) diary system, but in the top 15 markets, we have a household meter service married to the diary system and we can cross-check information every day,” Spiegel said.

By next fall, Sacramento and Minneapolis will be added to the list of daily-rated markets, bringing the total to 17 major markets that encompass 40% of the U.S. population.

The remaining 197 markets do depend solely on sweeps for their ratings, but, ironically, they do not manifest the sweeps tactics of the big market stations.

If sweeps sensationalism is a gimmick to artificially inflate ratings, broadcasters in places like Los Angeles and New York are just wasting their time. Advertisers say they aren’t fooled.

“Sweeps are only one tool and savvy agency buyers, after all, aren’t going to use one tool when they have a whole potpourri available to choose from, especially in a major market,” said the Advertising Research Foundation’s Larry Stoddard.

Most major agencies and spot buyers who purchase commercial TV time rely on year-round information tucked away in computer banks to compare normal months to sweeps. They know a highly-promoted news series such as KNBC-TV Channel 4’s weeklong examination of sex at the office or KCBS Channel 2’s “Date Rape” will produce abnormal ratings.

As a result, advertisers say that they downplay or even totally discount sweeps ratings when determining how much they’re willing to pay for commercials.

“So who do (telecasters) think they’re fooling? The ratings services? I don’t think so,” said Larry Collins, TV advertising writer for the trade magazine Adweek.

Then why do they do it?

Some would say tradition. Some would say inertia. Still others say stupidity.

Winter Olympics station KABC’s 11 p.m. newscast, Sunday, Feb. 21, opened with a report on the U.S. ice hockey team losing in Calgary, followed by a seven-minute live in-studio interview with two U.S. ice skaters who won a bronze medal. Following a commercial break, the news switched to a special sweeps report on computer porn. Next came weather, followed by a fashion report on a new kind of bathing suit that makes women look 20 pounds thinner.

Then, more sports . . .

When Nielsen Media Research and Arbitron Ratings Service first began surveying every TV market in the nation 30 years ago, diaries were the simplest and most cost-effective method. The two companies sent out thousands of diaries four times a year to households with television. Viewers were asked to write down what shows they watched, then mail the diaries back.

More diaries are mailed out now than were sent during the sweeps of the ‘50s, but the process remains just as medieval today. Sometimes viewers forget which show they watched and scribble in a guess. Sometimes they write in an educational program or a news documentary that they didn’t watch simply because they want to register a “vote” for quality TV. Sometimes they turn over the diary to the kids and let them put in whatever they want.

Most of the time, Nielsen and Arbitron officials contend, they write down the truth.

Since the sweeps diaries were first introduced in the 1950s, America has become wired. Computers, cable and metered TVs have led to new, far more sophisticated rating methods that should make the cumbersome, flawed diary system an anachronism.

“But it isn’t,” said Laurence Frerk, director of advertising for Nielsen Media Research. “Everybody in the business still depends on them.”

While national advertisers say that they discount sweeps, local agencies do not always dismiss them so easily, according to Nielsen’s. When projecting regional time buys and long-range ad campaigns, a significant number of advisers fall back on the sweeps diary system, according to Frerk.

Every sweeps period, Nielsen hires 650 temporary employes to work three shifts a day in the company’s diary tabulation center in Duniden, Fla. For a month, according to Nielsen’s Kathryn Creech, “a bunch of blue-haired ladies in Duniden read 100,000 diaries” and sift the viewing information into a complex book of numbers--”Viewers in Profile.”

Arbitron goes through a similar sweeps exercise at its diary tabulation facilities just outside of Baltimore.

For the next three months, the Nielsen and Arbitron “books” become the Bibles of the broadcasting industry.

Frerk theorizes that derelict advertisers depend heavily on these sweeps books even though they say that they don’t. Canny time buyers look at non-sweeps ratings as well as sweeps, but even they rely on sweeps books to some degree to plan future TV ad campaigns.

A few years ago, Nielsen published a simplified version of the half-inch thick “Viewers in Profile,” according to Frerk. “Time Buyer’s Friend” had only bare-bones statistics on which stations and shows fared best during sweeps. Despite its scanty information, it was wildly popular among advertisers, he said.

Finally, Nielsen discontinued it because broadcasters whose ratings appeared to be among the lowest in “Time Buyer’s Friend” complained that the booklet oversimplified the ratings.

“A story of power and passion where an ancient coin will determine the fate of a modern empire. Enter the adventure. Enter at your own risk.”

--Feb. 21 newspaper ad for “Noble House”

“Tune in first for ‘Our House,’ ‘Family Ties’ and ‘My Two Dads . ‘ “

--Adjoining ad for “Noble House”

“Enter the Real Hong Kong: Meet the Real Tai-Pan. (Right after “Noble House”)

--A third ad for KNBC News at 11

The kind of promotion overkill given a sweeps series like “Noble House” would be a waste of time and money if TV ratings were delivered throughout the year.

Unfortunately, year-round ratings are too expensive for most stations. According to Frerk, a station can pay anywhere from $25 to $20,000 for ratings, depending upon the size of the market, the frequency of reports and the detailed comparison of one station’s ratings to another.

Both Frerk and Arbitron’s vice president for TV sales, Pete Megroz, say the technology to supersede sweeps diaries has been around for years. Nielsen’s new Peoplemeters, which electronically track what every member in the family watches every day all year long, are now installed in 2,800 sample homes. There will be 4,000 of them tabulating daily ratings by next September.

A similar system that Arbitron has been testing for more than a year in Denver not only records what each family member watches, but the ScanAmerica system also keeps tabs on where a family shops, what products it buys and how that correlates with what commercials family members see on TV.

The Ad Bureau’s Speigel predicts that neither ScanAmerica nor Peoplemeters will ever become inexpensive enough for the smaller markets to afford. At most, only the top 50 markets will be able to get the regular overnight rating information that would ultimately make the sweeps system obsolete, he said.

But Los Angeles, which currently relies on both the sweeps diaries and the overnight reports from Arbitron and Nielsen meters, will eventually be able to get ratings reports instantly.

Indeed, KNBC’s newsroom knew within 24 hours of its Feb. 8 broadcast that reporter Laurel Erickson’s special report on psychics boosted or “spiked” the overnight ratings of KNBC’s nightly newscast.

“So you can probably guess we’ll have more psychic crap on the air in May (the next sweeps period),” said one Channel 4 newsroom regular.

Ironically, the stations that would be expected to use the sweeps book the most seem least susceptible to playing the sweeps game. In smaller markets from Glendive, Mont. (the nation’s smallest) to Davenport, Iowa (the 74th largest market), to Bakersfield, Calif. (No. 148), Calendar found that newscasters stick to the news, even during the heated competition of sweeps.

Why?

“Because viewers are more sophisticated than we (broadcasters) give them credit for being,” said Frank Gardner, general manager of KBAK-TV in Bakersfield and former general manager of KCBS-TV in Los Angeles. “I’m not saying that ‘stunting’ doesn’t work. It does, but you have to have a tradition of stunting, like KABC does. You can’t just toss in a series on lesbian nuns and expect that to get you ratings.”

“You’re fired! One day you’re a homemaker with a family. The next you’re on your own. How do you cope? Let us into your home at 4. And we’ll tell you what to do if and when the roof caves in. Today at 4.”

--Feb. 29 ad for the “Eyewitness News” on KABC-TV

“What television is for me is marathons, not sprints,” said Scott Goldstein, producer of “L.A. Law” and a former TV news producer. “The things that are done for sweeps are done because of a sprint mentality. We’ll throw some flash and trash on, but good television is an endurance contest. Good television survives.”

Good TV happens even during sweeps. The fever of February generated a lot of excellent entertainment and some fine investigations along with the yellow journalism.

The usual dippy high-jinks of “Facts of Life” gave way to plots that addressed the loss of virginity and facial disfigurement during February sweeps. KTLA Channel 5 aired the uncut, touching feature film “Mask,” about a doomed teen-ager with a grotesque congenital disease. KTTV Channel 11’s Judd McIlvain did a four-part expose of the often-shoddy helicopter traffic reports that local radio stations broadcast each morning to freeway travelers.

Channel 4 ran an investigative series on medical lab ripoffs and, enroute to Hong Kong for his KNBC puff piece on “Noble House,” reporter David Garcia did a serious special report on what Californians can learn from Japan’s earthquake preparations. In the past, KABC has done sweeps reports on toxics and the problems with the air traffic control system and this time out, Dr. Art Ulene discussed the myths and realities surrounding cholesterol.

The problem, local news producers complain, is that with the genuine glut of minidocs--flashy, trashy or not--throughout the month, there is little room for the news.

“Since last November, they’ve already figured out what the news is going to be in February,” jests former KABC reporter Wayne Satz. “You walk in to the newsroom during sweeps and the board listing the sequence of stories for the different shows is already filled in at 10 a.m. I used to ask, ‘What, are you clairvoyant? You already see what the news is going to be today before it happens?’ ”

WCBS in New York advertised a sweeps series March 1 “Eyeglasses: Hocus Focus” in which undercover reporters “took the same prescription to several different eyeglass centers. The result? The glasses were wrong one-third of the time. Troubleshooter Roseanne Colletti takes a close-up look at the eyeglasses business.”

“Television is a medium with absolutely no mystery left. It’s naked,” said Herb Dorfman, a former producer for all three networks and now a professor of communications at Brooklyn College.

In a recent study for Television Quarterly: Journal of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Dorfman dissected sweeps programming in New York and Los Angeles. He reached the following conclusions about why the ritual persists.

Clever programmers may think they’re conning the audience during sweeps, but the hype is transparent, according to Dorfman.

“There are no surprises in television. Everyone’s in on the joke. The audience is part of the process. They’re all critics. They all know how sweeps are done and why they’re done. This is a game and everyone’s a player. All you need to participate is a TV set.”

Like Pavlov’s puppies, viewers have been conditioned to expect sweeps programming and might actually be disappointed if they were not manipulated by tabloid TV once every few months, Dorfman said. It almost becomes a sado-masochistic exercise.

“The audience tries very hard to play along, but TV won’t let them,” he said. “Television refuses to let its audience live in illusion. There is no ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ by the audience the way there is in theater or movies. The minute TV gets you lured in, they let you in on the secret.”

Sweeps is television’s ultimate secret. America turns on the tube during sweeps because it has grown used to being manipulated and now expects it . . . even demands it. And the lucky few who get to fill out a Nielsen or Arbitron diary manipulate right back.

“I remember once I did this terrific exclusive interview with Randolph Churchill (Winston’s son) for a local newscast and we got coverage the next day in all the papers. And the next ratings report showed that our numbers jumped up for that night,” recalled Dorfman.

“Now, how did the audience know ahead of time--because this was a newscast you understand . . . no warnings or promos about my interview-- How did the audience know I was going to have a great interview with Churchill and tune in? They didn’t know! What they did was record after the fact in their diaries that they watched the newscast because they wanted to believe that they saw the newscast! Sweeps ratings are as much of an illusion as sweeps programs.”

The illusion resumes in May.

Stay tuned.

Steve Weinstein and Diane Haithman contributed to this story.