Why Your TV Screams at You in May
[by Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications]
It’s that time of year when TV news promotions get louder, more breathless, more salacious and more frequent.
It’s the reason every one of your local stations launches competing, exclusive, super-secret investigative reports. It’s a mad rite of spring for TV stations all across the country – it’s the Nielsen May “sweeps” ratings period.
Starting on April 28 and running until May 25, the May sweeps (called the “May Book” in TV newsrooms because ratings results were first published in book form), along with the November ratings period, are the two survey months traditionally most critical in determining TV station advertising rates. Moving your ratings up just a notch or two can translate into a significant revenue spike for stations. That’s why the gloves come off in May and November. Staff is prohibited from taking vacation during sweeps months. It’s a full-court press for your attention, and if Nielsen is metering your TV usage, you get to vote with your TV remote.
We’re always cognizant of sweeps periods while working with our clients. If a crisis strikes your organization immediately before or during a sweeps month, it will likely get far more coverage than in non-sweeps months. Old issues frequently get new legs when a reporter decides a story that ran previously about your organization was sensational enough to update during a ratings period.
It’s actually best to say yes to a reporter dredging up old news and wanting to interview you about the issue – you get a second chance to calmly deliver your key messages and talk about positive changes you’ve made. Time permitting, it’s always a good idea to sneak in a media training refresher before you sit down for that interview, of course.
Right now, Nielsen sweeps only measure TV screen usage – the company has not yet broadly introduced a service that captures viewership on mobile phone screens, laptop screens, etc. Nielsen is playing catch-up in that regard with ratings competitor comScore, which has rolled out a multi-platform ratings tool that measures non-duplicative audience views across all screens. comScore has just shared incredible multi-screen numbers it collected for CNN.
It will be interesting to monitor how multi-platform ratings tools develop as Nielsen rolls out its own product, what that does for TV revenues, and how that changes – and likely intensifies – sweeps. Stay tuned.
(CLICK for the full comScore CNN Cross-Media Report)