FROM SILLY TO SHAMELESS
Why do sweeps bring out the worst in TV news?
by Deborah Potter

Brace yourself. It's sweeps time again. If past is prologue, we're in for another month of music and melodrama, titillation and tie-ins, as local TV newscasts bombard us with stories designed with one goal in mind: to make people watch. Just one question. Has anyone noticed it's not working any more?

From Salt Lake City to Washington, DC, stations have been losing viewers in droves. In February, compared to the same month a year ago, two Salt Lake stations each lost about 20 percent of their late news audience.

Desperate to win viewers back, stations regularly air sweeps stories that are so silly or shameless that anyone with half a conscience should be embarrassed to pass them off as news. During the last round in February, one Houston station warned that your pet cat could make you crazy. Viewers in St. Louis were treated to a report about thong underwear…for men. And more than one station locked a reporter in an empty apartment to see if a person can survive-get this-with only an Internet connection to the outside world. Imagine, ordering all your food and entertainment online! Now, how exactly is this news to anyone?

Sweeps periods bring out the worst in TV news. Even network programs aren't immune. ABC's Good Morning America broadcast live in February from hospital delivery rooms in Boston and Dallas, so viewers could watch not one, not two, but four babies being born on the air. Ah, television: invading what should have been a private moment to make a buck. Not the first time, of course. We've already seen live eye surgery, live mammograms, a live colonoscopy. Let's not even wonder what might be next.

But along with the voyeurism and fear mongering, sweeps also bring out the best in TV news, as stations showcase their finest reporting.

KDFW-TV in Dallas dug into sloppy accounting by the public school district, reporting on missing funds and property. WCPO-TV in Cincinnati continued its prize-winning investigation into spending on two new sports stadiums. And WLS-TV in Chicago revealed that two-dozen city and county officials were being chauffeured around at taxpayer expense-a story that took six months to develop.

The trouble for viewers is that best and worst are often on the very same station. Case in point: KCBS-TV in Los Angeles, which aired a solid report in February on men being forced to pay child support for children they did not father because they missed a state deadline for paternity testing. Two days later, the station's "special assignment" report was on a man who teaches survival skills in the Arizona desert. Survivor. CBS. Get it? Or take WCCO-TV in Minneapolis, which produced a hard look at safety on the public transit system in February, but also promoted a meaningless "coffee taste test."

These "put-it-to-the-test" comparisons are the flavor of the month for consumer reporters. Who's the fastest for pizza deliveries or one-hour film developing? Who cares, when the difference is measured in minutes? KELO-TV news director Mark Millage says these stories don't tell viewers much of value and often look a lot like commercials, but he admits that at his station in Sioux Falls, SD, "We're guilty of it too." That's because product and service comparisons are relatively cheap and easy to do. Serious investigations, in-depth reporting-these things take real money and time.

Whether it's quality reporting or tabloid trash, stations put a lot of effort into what airs during sweeps. And that's part of the problem. "Concentrating all the good stuff during sweeps is a little like cramming for exams," says Scott Libin, news director at KSTP-TV in Minneapolis. "You can increase your odds of passing, but chances of retaining what you've learned are not good. Luring an audience for a few nights at a time rather than building its loyalty over months and years can have similar results: Viewers slip away like obscure facts memorized in an all-night study session."

That lesson has yet to be learned, perhaps because the pressure during sweeps is so intense. Viewership as measured during sweeps months sets future advertising rates that directly affect a station's financial health. "People lose their jobs because they have one bad [ratings] book," says Millage of KELO-TV. "That's the reality."

So stations will try just about anything to do well. It should come as no surprise that on the last night of February sweeps, stations in Philadelphia began hyping what one called "the storm of the decade." Never mind that it wasn't due to snow for four days, and when the storm came it didn't amount to much.

Fewer viewers seem to be falling for the hype these days. So far, stations have responded by shouting louder and aiming lower. So brace yourself. There's no indication that May will be any different.

(This article was originally published in the American Journalism Review, May 2001)