Swept Up in Sweeps

By Meg James

Dec. 9, 2002 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

FRESNO —

Allison Ash’s first day as a reporter for KGPE-TV Channel 47 was spent chasing dead cows.

Ash and a cameraman had driven an hour south of here to report on Central California’s latest outbreak of infectious bovine tuberculosis. They found the farm, but not the herd because the animals had been slaughtered a week earlier.

Still, the news must go on -- especially when it’s sweeps season and stations are clamoring for viewers to drive up ad rates. So, dressed in a black suit and heels, Ash talked her way onto the muddy farm lot last month and taped a “stand-up” report for the 5 o’clock news.

“Every market has its own personality,” Ash said later as she gamely prepared for another day in the trenches at a station where sweeps month assumes a kind of importance unmatched in the big metropolitan markets.

In Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and other larger cities, ratings and demographic information gleaned during the year’s three sweeps periods remain crucial in determining ad rates and bragging rights. But stations in those top 55 TV markets have the benefit -- some call it a burden -- of getting generalized viewership statistics every day from Nielsen Media Research Inc., giving executives a good idea of how they’re doing.

Not so in Fresno, which is ranked 57, and other markets where stations can’t afford the Nielsen overnights. For them, the sweeps period rules the day, providing the only breakdown of viewership information and thus determining how much local advertisers will pay.

Virtually all that money is spent during local newscasts because the big networks -- Viacom Inc.-owned CBS, General Electric Co.-owned NBC and Walt Disney Co.-owned ABC, for example -- keep the lion’s share of prime-time commercial dollars.

“Sweeps are like getting dressed up for church, inviting your neighbors over for dinner,” said General Manager Barry Barth of Channel 47, a CBS affiliate. “You want to be at your best because that’s when you are being measured.... Unfortunately, the American way is to compete.”

Just before Christmas, the results for the November sweeps will be known and Barth may be able to loosen his collar -- or be forced to hunker down for more combat. Among other things, he will learn whether anyone is watching the three syndicated programs -- “Will & Grace,” “Just Shoot Me” and “That ‘70s Show” -- the low-rated station just bought as lead-ins to its all-important evening news hours. Despite the technological revolution, the fortunes of Barth’s station are still tied to a practice that debuted in 1958, when CBS’ “Gunsmoke” was television’s top-rated show. Ever since, families throughout the country, selected by Nielsen, have been jotting down the shows they watch in paper diaries. In Fresno, there are about 500 of those homes.

CBS President and Chief Executive Leslie Moonves says the monthlong sweeps, when the networks try to help the local stations by giving them gussied-up programming, only steals quality shows that could be spread throughout the year.

“The sweeps system is an old and artificial way of doing business,” he said. “No network is happy having to schedule for sweeps because in certain instances, it screws up the rest of the year.”

For now, however, there’s no alternative for the hundreds of stations in smaller markets, where it can cost more than $1 million annually to install the technology and pay the overhead for overnight results.

At Channel 47, and others like it, there’s barely enough money to cover the news.

“Our anchors aren’t sitting around drinking coffee eight hours a day,” News Director Thomas Burke said. Everyone, he said, is expected to pitch in.

Sometimes, for example, anchor Susie Frankeberger cleans the set, which was painted one recent fall weekend by Burke and some of his staff.

Frankeberger returned two years ago to California’s Central Valley because the single mom wanted to be closer to her mother, a local hairdresser.

“This whole idea of sweeps is pretty bizarre,” Frankeberger said. “Like right now, it’s fog season, and the most important thing we can do this week is to tell people which schools are on a fog schedule.”

Most of all, she added, “we try to push every day to be consistent.”

Consistency is difficult, however. In fact, the operation spends so much of its time putting out fires, popular on-air personality Sam Dog the Dalmatian seems a fitting mascot.

Its creaky old transmitter is prone to breakdowns. The station recently switched to an automated camera system that has provided viewers with some unexpected candid moments: During a newscast, one of the cameras on the set suddenly started rotating and showed the weatherman standing casually in front of a big green screen without the superimposed maps and graphics.

Then there was the recent Thursday during sweeps when Channel 47 began its 5 p.m. newscast with a poignant six-minute story about a mother coping with the murders of her four children by her ex-husband, who then killed himself.

As the story unfolded on the screen, Burke noticed that a competing station was leading its broadcast with the “breaking news” that a school bus driver reportedly had been shot. The chase was on as news vans raced up Highway 99 to Madera in a tight convoy.

The local ABC station arrived first. Minutes later the NBC affiliate and Channel 47 arrived in a virtual dead heat. Crews from both stations extended the satellite poles from their vans.

Just as Channel 47 was about to go live on the air, the other crew powered up, cutting off the station’s signal.

Back in the newsroom, Burke and a knot of engineers and managers watched helplessly as the picture dissolved into static. “Channel 24 is knocking us out,” cried one news producer. “They’re knocking us off the air!”

Although frustrated himself, Burke consoled the troops.

“You want to win and everyone is hustling really hard, and then some technical snafu happens,” Burke said. “It might not be as aggressive here as it is in Los Angeles, but we’re still about trying to get the information to the viewer and get it on the air first.”

In the end, the bus driver had been grazed by a pellet that a youth had launched with a slingshot.

The station also has gone through three ownership changes in the last three years.

Ackerly Communications, which owns the Seattle Supersonics, sold the station last summer to Clear Channel Communications Inc. Clear Channel executives, recognizing the growth potential of the Fresno market, vows to spend more on equipment so Channel 47 can become a contender as it moves toward its 50th anniversary next fall.

The station soon will be able to hire another cameraman to complement its newest addition, reporter Ash.

Ash, who worked in Pittsburgh before moving to Fresno, knows what it’s like to be on the other side of the divide, where there is money for advisors and overnight ratings.

“In those markets, they’d take the numbers so seriously -- it was like the gospel,” Ash said.

In the morning, she recalled, the news executives would be clustered around the printouts. “You’d know right away who was going to be in a good mood that day.”

In Fresno, she said, “it’s competitive but it’s not slash-the-tires-of-the-other-news-crews competitive.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

The Central Valley TV picture

Fresno’s viewing area, as defined by Nielsen Media Research, includes Fresno, Madera, Kings and Tulare counties and parts of Merced and Mariposa counties.

Fresno area by the numbers

Population: 1,669,743

Number of TV households: 519,330

U.S. cable subscribers: 69.4%

Fresno area cable subscribers: 51%

Major broadcast TV stations: 9 (includes Spanish-language stations)

Median age: 31.4 years

Median household income: $32,828

Percentage of homeowners: 70.8%

Family status

Married: 56.6

Never married: 26.5