Will sweeps become extinct?
By CHASE SQUIRES
Published February 4, 2005
This week marks the start of another of television's "sweeps," a monthlong period during which broadcasters trot out their most dazzling productions in a quarterly dogfight for viewers.
The idea is to lure us like moths to a bug zapper, so we can be computed into demographic data and converted into advertising dollars.
But broadcast network heads, feeling the competitive heat from the ever-proliferating cable universe, have mumbled about a push to a year-round television season in the past. But this time they might mean it, thanks to a new viewer monitoring system, according to marketing analyst John Rash, a senior vice president at the Campbell Mithun ad agency in Minneapolis.
Nielsen Media Research, which tallies who's watching what, has started to change the way it works. Instead of relying on TV diaries that a representative sample of viewers are supposed to fill out and mail back, the company is moving to electronic boxes that collect data automatically. The system is aimed especially at the channel surfer.
Sweeps are scheduled in February, May, July and November. Those periods will continue to exist until Nielsen's conversion to the People Meter system, which has just begun, is completed. The Local People Meter service is in five of the top 10 markets now, and the other five are due to be connected by 2006. The Tampa Bay area market is ranked 13th by Nielsen. The biggest market, which is connected to the new system, is New York City with 7.3-million TV homes.
Using the old system is simply too expensive to collect the intensely local data that individual affiliates need to set their advertising rates -- and that's why sweeps were created.
"Sweeps are an audience anachronism," Rash said. "All of the networks have made public pronouncements that they are moving toward a 52-week season. They are faced with continuously eroding audience bases, and they can't keep the same business model."
"Within 10 years, I would say sweeps would be irrelevant," said Preston Beckman, Fox executive vice president for strategic planning. "It's nice to win them, but I really don't think they will have the meaning that they would have had in the past."
- Chase Squires squires@tampabay.com