• Contact Us
  • VIP Support
  • Client Login
Futuri Media
  • About Futuri
  • Solutions
    • Radio
      • POST
      • TopicPulse
      • TopLine
      • Tether
      • Prep+
      • Futuri Mobile
      • Futuri Streaming
      • Futuri Voice
      • TopicPulse SportsEdge
    • TV
      • POST
      • TopicPulse
      • TopLine
      • TopLine-Pivot
      • TopicPulse SportsEdge
    • Digital Publishing
      • POST
      • TopicPulse
      • TopicPulse SportsEdge
  • Jobs
  • News & Resources
  • Tell Me More
  • Menu Menu
  • Home
  • About Futuri
  • Solutions
    • Radio
      • POST
      • TopicPulse
      • TopLine
      • Tether
      • Prep+
      • Futuri Mobile
      • Futuri Streaming
      • Futuri Voice
      • TopicPulse SportsEdge
    • TV
      • POST
      • TopicPulse
      • TopLine
      • TopLine-Pivot
      • TopicPulse SportsEdge
    • Digital Publishing
      • POST
      • TopicPulse
      • TopicPulse SportsEdge
  • Jobs
  • News and Resources
  • Tell Me More
People with televisions as heads

Sweeps is over. What did you learn?

May 27, 2022/in Television/by Zena

By Tim Wolff, VP, TV & Digital Publishing Innovation, Futuri Media

There is rarely a more dramatic difference in a TV newsroom than the staffing level on the last day of sweeps and the staffing level the next week.

Typically, there are no vacations during May sweeps at local TV stations, and only limited vacation during the less-important July sweeps. So everyone tries to take vacation in June. But before you leave sweeps behind and hit the beach, take some time to figure out what you learned during sweeps.

Whether you’re new in the business or a 40-year vet, every sweeps period holds new information. On a grand scale, your station might have tried new strategies, or you might have gone through the same tactics as always, with this year’s stories echoing those of the past. The important thing is to analyze success and failure while you are still fully engaged in sweeps mode, because when you come back from the beach, you’ll have a hard time remembering all the finer details of how you executed sweeps coverage.

I’ll share with you a few stories of how analysis changed strategies and tactics in my own news career. First, let me talk about the process and the mistakes you can make.

Everyone in metered markets looks at the overnight ratings (and least where Nielsen is still the standard), and the first thing we typically do is look at how our promotables performed. These are usually the stories at the quarter-hour of our most critical newscasts, designed to bring the highest viewing where we need it most…and coupled with main weather to get the most impact.

Why do stations do that, anyway? Why do they put their big stories right next to weather?

In traditional Nielsen metered ratings, viewership is measured by the highest 5 continuous minutes of each quarter-hour. So at night, when viewers are ready to go to bed, that usually means 10:15-10:20 (or 11:15-11:20) will be the highest-rated 5-minutes of the 15-30 quarter-hour. So stations will put their big, promotable news story at about 15 minutes after the hour, followed immediately by weather that will last until at least 20 minutes after the hour. If, at 10:21, everyone who was watching turns off the TV and goes to bed, it doesn’t matter to the ratings: that 10:15-10:20 number will count for the entire 10:15-10:30 quarter-hour.

Additionally, having a strong promotable story can keep viewers watching the beginning of the newscast longer, waiting to see the promoted story.

A common mistake

This reality for stations often leads to the most common mistake I see in analyzing success and failure in sweeps stories. We’d often look at the previous night’s late news, see what the second quarter hour rating was, and base our judgment of the sweeps story on that ratings performance. But there are so many other factors that have to be included.

The finest research director I ever worked with had a great system. She tracked every sweeps story, lead story, lead-in rating and…the weather at the time of the newscast. This made a dramatic difference. Too often, I’ve seen stations double down on a sweeps topic because they thought it performed well–when in reality, there was severe weather coming, and it was the weather that viewers cared about. I’ve seen the opposite, too; stations giving up on a sweeps topic after a lackluster ratings performance without realizing the weather was unusually pleasant. That’s not to say the sweeps stories don’t matter; they do. We just have to also realize that weather coverage is a key driver for most local stations.

Most of all, we have to realize that looking at a quarter hour rating and deducing anything specific is not easy. Minute-by-minute reports are helpful, though still somewhat limiting. One way we analyzed success was whether a sweeps story gained or lost viewers during the story; a spike in viewers leaving tells you there’s something definitive you’ve done wrong. We’d also look at what happened in the moments before the big stories, where you can learn another truth.

Sometimes your best stories are not promotable

I remember one particularly excellent sweeps story done by our main anchor. It was a beautifully told story that went on to win just about every award it could. It did not lose a single viewer during the story.

Unfortunately, we lost viewers before we got to the story. I was the producer that night, and it is the only time in my life I can remember that I knew we had a great story…but there was no good way to tease it. The story was about a topic that people generally did not care about, and the crux of it was a surprising twist…but to tease the twist would have ruined the story. So I remember the tease being lackluster…and the minute by minute analysis showed that we lost viewers with the tease, not the story.

Of course, most of our big stories are promotable, but that doesn’t mean we always promote them well. When you see surprisingly low ratings for a story you thought would do well, it’s best to investigate. Often, when you go back and look at the teases, you’ll find the problem there; it wasn’t the story, it was a bad tease. Or maybe a clunky anchor intro. Armed with that data, you can then set new systems or methods to make sure you’ve got great teases and intros going forward.

It’s not always the big story

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about sweeps stories, but they don’t exist in a vacuum. The everyday decisions made about lead stories, other reporter stories, live shots, vos and vosots at any moment in any newscast can make a big impact on ratings. It’s important we analyze these, too. In so doing during one sweeps period, I learned that our 11pm news actually performed better when we didn’t do sweeps pieces–it was actually one key in that market in going from third to first place at 11 (I’ll write that full story in a future article). In another case, we learned that a particular reporter’s live presence had become a liability; in another, we learned that first weather in the middle of the A block actually drove viewers to bed earlier.

All of these things can vary by market, station, and time of year. The important thing is to create a strong way of analyzing your performance during sweeps, get to causation whenever possible, and adjust future strategies and tactics accordingly.

Don’t forget the people

And one last thing before you hit the beach: don’t forget about your team. Everyone just spent 4 weeks giving you everything they had, with emotions tied into the stories they did and how those stories performed. Take some time to manage that team, to make sure they are heard, empowered and fully invested in your mission. After all, some of them are going to have to do double shifts while everyone else goes on vacation.

Tim Wolff is the VP of TV & Digital Publishing Innovation at Futuri Media. To learn more or continue the conversation, email him at timwolff@futurimedia.com or message him on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/timwolff1/.  For insights on how digital data can help grow TV ratings, click here.

Tags: TopicPulse TV
Share this entry
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Reddit
  • Share by Mail
https://futurimedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/shutterstock_507003460.png 355 640 Zena https://futurimedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/futuri-logo-.png Zena2022-05-27 09:25:542022-05-31 07:29:49Sweeps is over. What did you learn?
Related Posts
The demo targeting you're probably getting wrong The demo targeting you’re probably getting wrong
Winning Breaking News How to win breaking news (hint: it’s not just about being first)
AI, big data, and the newsroom: It's Time AI, big data, and your newsroom: It’s time
Webinar for making appointment TV WATCH NOW: Making Appointment TV When You Have 10 (14? 24?) Hours of News
A journalist at her desk AP report: AI is an opportunity for local newsrooms
television channels NBC Wins Despite Losses
0 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Request a Demo

Products

POST for Radio
POST for TV
POST for Digital Publishing
TopicPulse for Radio
TopicPulse ContentAdvantage for TV
TopicPulse ContentAdvantage for Digital Publishing
TopicPulse SportsEdge
TopLine
TopLine for TV
Prep+
Futuri Mobile
Futuri Voice
Tether

About

Overview
Leadership
Timeline
Clients
Awards

Main Pages

Home
About
Products
Jobs
News

Social

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Resources

VIP Support
Client Login
Contact Us
Terms & Conditions
Privacy Policy
DMCA

Sign up for our newsletter!

© 2022 Futuri Media

Futuri is the leading provider of cloud-based audience engagement software for the enterprise. Brands rely on Futuri to make their content more relevant, accessible, engaging, and results-driven. Founded in 2009, Futuri holds 12 published or pending patents in 151 countries. Named to the Inc. 5000 List of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies for seven consecutive years, Futuri is the only audience engagement platform that includes solutions for sales, marketing, and content teams.

Scroll to top

This website uses cookies. We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners who may combine it with other information that you’ve provided to them or that they’ve collected from your use of their services. You consent to our cookies if you continue to use our website.

I Consent

Cookie and Privacy Settings



How we use cookies

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

Essential Website Cookies

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refuseing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.

We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.

Google Analytics Cookies

These cookies collect information that is used either in aggregate form to help us understand how our website is being used or how effective our marketing campaigns are, or to help us customize our website and application for you in order to enhance your experience.

If you do not want that we track your visit to our site you can disable tracking in your browser here:

Other external services

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Google reCaptcha Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:

Privacy Policy

You can read about our cookies and privacy settings in detail on our Privacy Policy Page.

I Consent