You're in sweeps everyday

As we approach the May book news departments are scrambling to get those great series or single stories in the can. Promotions departments are getting sensational promos ready. And the undercurrent in all of this is the thinking that viewers are suddenly going to switch allegiance if you bust your tail for one month.

Uh, no.

Viewers are creatures of habit and when it comes to local news, very slow to change. And thanks to the term "sweeps" being brought into the mainstream by magazines like TV Guide, viewers are wise to the tricks. Stations that have been plodding along in non-sweeps months suddenly have dozens of exclusives that you have to see, many designed to scare the hell out of you. (My all time favorite was the series on escalator safety called, "Stairway to Death.") Generally every May, November and February I'm told that the following can kill me: restaurant food, water, the paint on my walls, something in the soil, chemicals in my groceries, etc. There are sexual predators living next door, someone is trying to steal me blind, and the teenager down the street is actually a gang lord.

The other nine months, I know I'll be fine.

A very wise ND once told me, "We're in sweeps everyday." You build viewers over the long haul, day after day, by beating the competition and providing stories viewers want to see. I'm always impressed when I see a local station run a great news promo in the dead of August, or during the week after Christmas when supposedly, no one is watching.

Guess what? Someone is always watching. And turning even one viewer, when ratings samples are so small, can make a big difference.

So while I know you'll all turn it up a notch during sweeps, don't just go on auto-pilot the rest of the time. You never know who's watching.