Local TV News Executives Defend the Sweeps Process

The panel discussion was billed as “Sex, Sleaze & Sweeps”--a title that did not sit well with the panel members: news executives at three network-owned TV stations in Los Angeles.

Nevertheless, in a rare joint appearance Thursday before a dinner audience of about 100 professional and student journalists, newsroom leaders at KABC-TV Channel 7, KNBC-TV Channel 4 and KCBS-TV Channel 2 reluctantly defended the controversial TV-ratings sweeps process.

On grounds of money.

“Our business is increasingly all about money,” said KCBS news director Erik Sorenson. “Money comes from ratings. And there is a commonly held belief that if you correctly program news to the audience, you can get higher ratings.”

Sorenson called the three chairmen of the networks--CBS’ Lawrence Tisch, NBC’s Jack Walsh and ABC’s Tom Murphy--”cut-throat people” demanding a return on their investment. He said he thought the three men would regard his characterization of them as a “compliment.” More than any other factor, according to Sorenson, the network profit motive has intensified sweeps competition and the special--sometimes sleazy--news programming that comes with it.

“But you’ve got to know that there’s two sides to us,” snapped KNBC managing editor Pete Noyes.

Noyes, the avuncular real-life prototype for the fictional Lou Grant character popularized by actor Ed Asner, lamented the scant attention that Los Angeles television gets for its competent day-in-day-out delivery of the news. While taking its lumps for sweeps series on such topics as office romance, phone sex and date rape, KNBC and its competitors have also produced sweeps series that have helped alert legislators to genuine social problems and have brought about new laws, according to Noyes.

Further, he said, newspapers such as The Times, which take broadcasters to task for tasteless programming, often commit the same sins in print.

“Sure there’s sleaze and sex but don’t tell me there’s not sleaze and sex in the newspaper too,” he added. “I don’t call The Times and ask them why they run all those sexy lingerie ads, and I gotta tell you I’m glad I don’t have to defend the View section when they do 4,000 words on a newly arrived debutante in town.”

KABC news director Terry Crofoot seconded Noyes’ attack on newspapers, pointing to mud-wrestling advertisements carried in The Times as an example of print sleaze.

He said KABC airs attention-grabbing news series all year long, not just during February (one of four sweeps ratings periods conducted each year by Arbitron and A. C. Nielsen Co.). He cited a series on “Telephone Terrorism” that aired this week as an example.

But unlike Noyes, who foisted the blame for KNBC’s sweeps stories on KNBC station management, Crofoot made no apology for KABC’s sweeps series, even though they do not always measure up to the lofty standards of what Crofoot termed “journalism with a capital J.”

KABC produces special mini-documentaries with its roster of “flamboyant” news personalities to keep ratings high during sweeps periods because that is when advertisers scrutinize ratings to determine how much money they will pay for commercial time, according to Crofoot.

Major market news operations like the three operated by Sorenson, Noyes and Crofoot are measured by the two ratings companies every day, but advertising agencies still insist on using the sweeps periods as a “rule of thumb,” according to Crofoot. That insistence, coupled with tighter network purse strings and an increasingly diffuse audience reinforces the concentrated effort that each station puts into sweeps, he said.

Crofoot estimated that TV watching has dropped by 50% during the last five years, chiefly because viewers have become busier and, therefore, more selective in what they watch. Cable and videocassette recorders have given viewers more choices, making the job of keeping audiences even tougher.

“If you did not have a solid news product day-in and day-out--the day the Challenger blows up, the day the floods hit, the day of the earthquake--people wouldn’t watch,” he said.

Sorenson said network and station managers usually become more generous with resources and expense money during sweeps, allowing their newsrooms to produce slick, in-depth reports such as KCBS’ 21-part series on Korea that aired during November sweeps. But Sorenson also focused on a more disturbing aspect of sweeps newscasting that, he said, threatens to get out of hand as profit-oriented upper management encourages the melding of entertainment and news.

“There is a commonly held belief, and it seems to be taking a stronger and stronger foothold, that if we’re doing a movie called ‘Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis’ and we just happen to have our entertainment reporter do a series on growing up with television in the ‘50s, why not run it the night that the network’s running ‘Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis?’ ” said Sorenson.

The theory, he said, is that the same audience that likes Dobie Gillis will stay tuned to watch the sweeps story on TV in the ‘50s.

“That’s what I call programming the news,” he continued. “You happen to be running a series called ‘Noble House’ (which aired in late February on KNBC), and it’s about Hong Kong. Why not send a guy to Hong Kong for a day and a half and do a series on Hong Kong?”

Sorenson said he wrestles frequently with the question of how much of the news he ought to “program,” noting that the profit-minded hierarchy at CBS often doesn’t see anything wrong with it.

“And the question is: What story are we not covering in that two-minute slot that this program piece goes into?” he said.

Noyes disavowed any part in the KNBC decision to send reporter David Garcia to Hong Kong for the “Noble House” story, but he is not totally against sweeps either, he said. If such dubious news programming increases ratings and “gives me enough money to do something good, I like it,” he said.

Noyes was a last-minute substitute in the Thursday program, sponsored by Sigma Delta Chi, the Society for Professional Journalists. KNBC news director Tom Capra was to have been on the panel, but he is currently in Korea with KNBC anchor Jess Marlow taping a pre-Olympics series that is scheduled to air on KNBC during May sweeps.

“I don’t think (TV news) gets enough credit for the good stories,” said Noyes. “I think the only credit (TV news) gets is when somebody sees a series that they disagree with. Frankly the series are a very small part of our output.”