blogs: Rick Redding 

Trust me, the local TV stations are still going to be pulling out their big guns for the TV ratings sweeps this month, but no matter what happens it's not going to mean much to the stations' bottom line. There are plenty of reasons. First, there's no valid comparisons to last February, when the country's TV viewers were all worked up over the digital transition, and Nielsen put off the ratings period to March. Local TV execs also tell me that February is traditionally less important than November, or May. And February is chock full of special programming that skews any semblance of a pattern for local broadcasters. There's the Super Bowl, of course, on CBS this year. But this year, NBC will be airing Winter Olympics coverage on a lot of nights, making the race for ratings during late-night difficult to measure. It will still be interesting to see what kind of late-night news numbers that WAVE will pull. Like other NBC stations, its late news ratings plummeted last fall as a result of the NBC decision to air Jay Leno as the 10 p.m. lead-in. Both WHAS and WLKY benefitted from NBC's call. But it doesn't look like WAVE will be going head-to-head against its competitors at 11 most nights, because of Olympic coverage that's likely to run past 11. There will 17 days of Olympics coverage in February, with the programming frequently extending into the 11 p.m. news hour. So the numbers won't make sense, and the Olympics will likely affect every time period. Consider that the Olympics is a big ratings winner, but will viewers stay with it even during blockbuster shows like American Idol? Will viewers switch over from Olympics at 10, or 11, to watch local news broadcasts? How will NBC's Olympics coverage affect mornings and the noon hour? Ultimately, it won't matter much on the local level. Still, newsrooms seem geared up for their "every-three-months-do-some-real-investigative-stories" pattern. WAVE enters February without a news director, after the somewhat mysterious departure of Lee Eldridge. But the station has brought on a new reporter and will going through its first sweeps since anchor Jackie Hays retired. At WHAS, news director Mark Neerman is in his first full sweeps month, and he's been busy shuffling personnel. But Neerman indicates to me his goal is to get away from the pattern, saying he believes in "a year-round sweeps approach." The closest any local station has come to that approach in recent years in Fox 41, and I don't expect you'll see a whole lot of difference in their coverage in February. At WLKY, the station will likely work really hard to come up with sweeps stories and strong promotions so it can brag about being #1 against WHAS-TV. After all, much more than the bottom line, maybe the stations are really competing for bragging rights.

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busy busy mommy   wed feb 03 2010 at 11:52 pm         ·  Hey Rick- What does the invention of the DVR/TiVo have on the sweeps? In my house, the kids will be watching American Idol and I will tape the Olympics and then watch after the kids go to bed.. Who gets credit for that time period from my house (not that we actually count as we aren't part of Nielsen)?? We also often watch both, flipping back and forth.... How does that get counted?? PS- I love Wave and was sad that Lee left the station and wish him well. I had emailed him once or twice during his tenure and he was very quick to return my message! Gained major points with me for that...

Rick Redding   thu feb 04 2010 at 7:45 am         ·  The overnight ratings, as I understand, don't include DVR viewings, but they are included in the final numbers. So, they do account for it.