Stations No Longer Saving Best For Sweeps

On Nov. 13, WJHL Tri-Cities, Tenn-Va., ran a made-for-sweeps story about the municipal water company in a cash-strapped community blowing $6,500 of taxpayer money on a retirement party. Dinner alone — 40 racks of ribs, 50 pounds of pulled pork and corn pudding — for the 50 guests cost nearly $2,000, to say nothing of the inflatable water slide and Beatles cover band.

But Jennifer Dale, news director of the Media General-owned CBS affiliate in the country’s 96^th largest market, says the attention-grabbing story could have aired just as easily in, say, October or September. “We don’t necessarily hold stories for sweeps,” Dale says. “We want to be the station that is there for you year-round.”

Dale is not alone. With November — one of four key sweeps months when Nielsen measures viewership in all markets (February, May and July are the others) — just days behind us, TV news managers and consultants say they largely don’t treat sweeps the way they used to, preferring to focus on producing constantly good newscasts year-round rather than just spicing things up every few months.

“It’s a 52-week strategy,” says Mike Oliveira, news director of WPXI, the Cox-owned NBC affiliate in Pittsburgh (DMA 23). “The way it was — when things looked totally different on Nov. 25 than Dec. 6 — those days are gone.”

Laura Clark, an SVP at consultant Magid Associates, agrees.

“There is so much competition for news and information that we can’t afford to only have our best foot forward four times a year, or for newscasts to be dramatically different during sweeps,” Clark says. “The deal is that if you are going to say you are, for instance, investigative, you can’t be that on an island in November and February and May and July. It’s got to be the way you do things all the time.”

For example,  a November investigative report by KXAN, the LIN-owned NBC affiliate in Austin, Texas (DMA 40), into barriers that prevented a cancer patient from getting potentially life-saving drugs was actually part of a larger investigative effort that started in August.

At LIN’s CBS affiliate WPRI Providence, R.I. (DMA 53), a sweeps story investigating how much money Rhode Island municipalities spend on managing pension funds — some with little return — was also part of a series on pension-fund problems. Work on the November story alone, which involved reporters tracking down and compiling data from each community about their investment strategies, started five months ago.

In November, the investigative team at WPTV, Scripps’ NBC affiliate in West Palm Beach, Fla. (DMA 38), reported on dangerous chemicals left unattended on a university campus and uncovered big gaps in how local schools spot and treat concussions.

But such reports are not out of the ordinary for the station. In August, for example, the investigative unit produced a series of reports exploring why  defibrillators, the simple-to-use intervention for cardiac arrest, are not more widely available.

Jerry Gumbert, CEO of consultant AR&D, says that even when stations produce stories for the sweeps they are far less gimmicky than they once were. Instead, stations are focusing on “important, in-depth investigations with strong journalistic prowess and no hype” that is becoming increasingly pervasive in their year-round coverage. “Original substantive content” has replaced “sensational bizarre stories,” he says.

In Philadelphia (DMA 4), NBC owned-WCAU was criticized for resorting to the old ways when it kicked off sweeps Nov. 1 by preempting 90 minutes of the Today show to cover a rain and windstorm. Viewers chastised the station for doing so in online postings, calling the nonstop coverage “overkill.”

News Director Anzio Williams, however, says sweeps “had nothing to do” with his decision to turn 9:30-11 a.m. completely over to a storm that wound up largely blowing through town. Rather, it was an extension of the station’s aggressive weather coverage year-round.

“You can’t do that for ratings,” Williams says. “I don’t want to be the news director that didn’t warn people and then something happens.”

Industry leaders say the trend of easing up on sweeps in favor of consistency is fueled by a range of factors — among them: stiffer competition, the 24/7 availability of news on mobile devices and stations in the country’s largest markets getting ratings on a daily basis.

Chris Archer, a news consultant at SmithGeiger, says the ubiquity of news on mobile devices — and the importance of TV stations winning in that arena — alone is a big enough game changer.

There is nothing seasonal about it, he says. “There is no such thing as sweeps on a smartphone right now and there probably isn’t going to be.”

In turn, the “short-term benefits” TV stations derive from stunts like contests and giveaways during sweeps have an even lesser impact on increasing viewers long-term than ever before, he says. “If this is a marathon and not a sprint, then it really is all about content and what you are doing on a day-to-day basis.”

Which isn’t to say that stations aren’t stepping up their game during sweeps.

Clark says measurements accrued during those critical months are still the industry’s “stock-in-trade, especially for any market that isn’t metered. That’s commerce.”

“Things definitely change in November just as they do in February and May,” Archer says. “The reality is stations are putting their best foot forward in these months. Some of it is because that’s the way it has always been, and also because it is tied to advertising revenue.”

Oliveira, for instance, says he ramps up newsroom enthusiasm during sweeps by offering incentives — gift cards and the like — for, say, the best live shot or breaking news story on a given day. The news department also works particularly closely with the station’s marketing department during sweeps to maximize the news team’s exposure.

Larry Silbermann, a Raycom regional news director who oversees nine TV stations in Georgia and North and South Carolina, says at his stations “we have to step up our game during the ratings periods,” although that frequently means more aggressive promotion than anything else.

“It becomes as much as anything a more concentrated marketing effort because we know that the networks are doing their best programming, the syndicators are doing their best, and the talk shows are doing their best. It just gives us a bigger audience to advertise to and to market to,” he says.

“But if we have a great story in January do we, say, hold it until February? Probably not,” he says. “In sweeps we still try to take a look at what’s going on and where the audience is, but at the end of the day it’s all about creating quality newscasts.”

Stations should not be going into “holiday mode” once December rolls around, says SmithGeiger’s Archer. “The viewers should never notice a drop-off after sweeps.”

Read other Air Check columns here. You can send suggestions for future Air Checks to Diana Marszalek at [email protected].