Thursday, Oct 30, begins the November ratings sweeps which end the day before Thanksgiving. Be on the lookout for lots of special reports and a good test for Fox 13 Seattle's Live Desk concept and Susannah Frame's first sweeps as new ND at KING. Let me know what you observe at any of the stations. Remember that the numbers are based not only on linear viewing, but IMPRESSIONS on the Internet.
Thanks for the heads up! Looking forward to seeing what the stations come up with this time for their special reports.
ReplyDeleteTime to retire the term “sweeps.” Sweeps no longer carry real significance—unless you’re writing a press release that means little outside of a newsroom. Network programming, once a source of strong lead-ins during sweeps periods, is quickly becoming obsolete in the age of Disney+, Paramount+, and Peacock. Advertisers now make decisions based on up-to-date audience metrics, not sweeps, with data available daily. If you truly want to gauge the health and relevance of a newsroom—focus on their digital performance and website analytics instead.
ReplyDeleteIf they don't matter, why do stations still push content highly promoted content in Nov, Feb and May? Linear numbers still matter. I would strongly disagree, given the emphasis sales gives them in addition to web impresseions.
ReplyDeleteI think they will matter less over time as linear numbers continue to drop and web impressions become ever more important to the bottom lines of stations. That being said, they will continue to matter for years to come, especially in markets that aren't as tech savvy as Seattle. They might begin to matter less in Seattle sooner. Just how soon remains to be seen.
DeleteThe other anonymous poster is right. Stations in this market don’t treat “ratings periods” the same anymore. Stations are constantly pushing out “special” content because they’re treating every day like a “ratings period”. Plus, stations actually give talent days off during these months, unlike the good old days. There’s been a shift in recent years since streaming is taking the throne and stations rely less on Nielsen and more on Comscore,
ReplyDeleteLocal stations nw say every night is a ratings night, but I still maintain that Nov., Feb and May get more special attention than September, for example. Also, there is so much PTO handed out, stations cannot black out vacations any longer. They key is to have the depth to adjust covering vacations and more attention to work/life balance. Nielsen has rolled out a new measurement technique, which is already spiking sports numbers, so I don't think Comscore has replaced it as yet. I appreciate your comments, thank you. Good convo.
DeleteInteresting conversation. With "overnights" and "sweeps" what truly matters more to advertisers and sales people? I dont know. Just asking
ReplyDeleteThe sweeps are essentially aggregates of 30 overnights to show consistent performance to advertisers. They are still looked at as benchmarks in that aggregate. Overnights are always important and can certainly show trending. They can also be helpful to new advertisers looking for upward trending in a demo, etc. In short, if it can be sold, it will be, at whatever price works for both sides. It's a funny memory when I was running newsrooms in the 80s in particular, meetings about Nov. sweeps started in September; Feb started right about Thanksgiving and May started in mid-March at the latest. And there were NO overnights.
ReplyDeleteWe used to travel to Laurel, Maryland to page thru diary panphlets at Nielsen back then. It was depressing to see some of the sloppy record-keeping and mean verbatim comments.