Taking Out the Trash and 3 Other Ways to Handle February TV “Sweeps”
[by Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications] Close on the heels of the New Year is the February Nielsen TV “sweeps” period – one of the ratings periods guaranteed to bring out the most salacious, over-the-top TV news special reports and sweeps series. The February sweeps period runs Feb 2 – March 1. Mark your calendars. It’s one of the most important “books” (rating period) of the year. Winners charge more for their ad time. Winning=revenue. Big revenue. The other major books are in May and November.
If a crisis or a controversial issue strikes your organization during February sweeps, expect TV news media to jump on it, and jump on it big. If there’s controversy or a classic “3V” story (the easy stories media tell that include a Victim, a Villain who harmed the Victim, and a Vindicator coming to the rescue), you should anticipate it will get much more attention that it might in non-sweeps months. And in that 3V story, you will likely be portrayed as the Villain unless you are prepared.
There are four ways organizations typically handle a TV news onslaught:
- Hide
Pull the covers over your head, and hope beyond hope that TV reporters won’t find out about your issue. A reflexive human response, certainly. But the moment an internal communication is leaked to the media or a disgruntled employee posts a nasty note on Twitter, off come the covers and on go the camera lights.
Needless to say, we never recommend this approach.
- “Take out the Trash”
I loved this tactic when I helped run the WKYC-TV newsroom. Business honchos rationalize that TV stations are so over-programmed during sweeps (or so busy covering huge breaking news events whenever they occur), that they’ll try sneaking in a benign-looking press release that buries their bad news in the third or fourth ‘graph. They assume no one will bother looking at it, much less read it. In our newsroom, we called that “taking out the trash.”
Let me assure you that every newsroom ALWAYS has a reporter keeping an eagle eye out for this. They’re the ones who sit in daily editorial meetings and ask “what are we missing because of all the stuff we’re already covering?”
We never recommend this approach either.
- Come clean
If news of your crisis or controversy leaks to the media, you’ve likely already been portrayed as the Villain in coverage. Get your side of the story out to your internal audiences (such as employees, regulators, etc.) and to the media as soon as you can. Be transparent, be consistent with the information you communicate, and be sure to talk about how you are going to fix the situation so it won’t likely happen again. In time, you can move from the Villain role to the Vindicator role, assuming you tell the truth and back up your words with actions. The issue here is that this reactive-only approach takes a lot of your time and always diverts your focus from running your business.
While we don’t recommend waiting until your news breaks to issue your first statement, we have helped hundreds of organizations precisely in this situation.
- Work your Crisis Communications Plan
Prescient businesses leaders make certain they have a crisis communications plan – one that is constantly updated – ready to roll when crisis or controversy strikes. They’ve anticipated scenarios that fate may bring to their doorstep and have media statements and social media posts already written, vetted with their general counsel, and ready to go so their story is told in the first cycle of news coverage. Click “send,” and you’re done. You can focus instead on the operational issues needing your attention. A crisis plan is the best insurance for protecting your reputation and claiming the Vindicator role in ensuing news coverage.
If there is such a thing as a “Good,” “Better,” or “Best” option in the crisis management catalog, we’d always recommend this strategy as best.
Even with the best advance planning, TV news media will “go big” on your issue during sweeps. That means they will commit multiple reporters and producers to your story. They will throw all the technology at the story they can and give it as much air time as they can. Because controversy draws eyeballs to TV news shows. And the more eyeballs, the bigger the ratings and the more money the station or network rakes in. They win. But if you are prepared, and you are relentlessly proactive communicating in a crisis, your reputation wins, too.