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captainsblog SPECIAL REPORRRRT!
May. 1st, 2007 08:53 amI hate May.
Not the she-May; I love her. Nor is this a slam on the approximately 8,000 people (including May) who are having birthdays this month. In fact, I'm going to be coming out with early one-to-a-customer birthday posts to all of you Maybabes starting next week, cause all of you deserve an entry all your own.
I also have no objections to Mothers Day, college graduations, my church's confirmation or any of the other observances of the coming days. Nor does the weather particularly suck. Rather, my Nay to May is entirely directed at the media, who since early last week have been bombarding our airwaves, tv and radio both, with nonstop ads for the "sweeps month" programming on the local stations.
You know the ones. The local news teams all dress up their "special reports," usually on the most lurid of subjects (onetime local powerhouse Channel 7, the one Bruce Almighty worked for, was famed for saving their exposes of prostitution for sweeps weeks). Some anchors risk life and limb eating tainted food or getting unsafe plastic surgery, and other stations monkey-see and monkey-do as soon as these hit the airwaves.
Even worse, these efforts are usually plugged, on tv but even more on radio, with nonstop plugs for the stations' own ::koff:: entertainment shows. God help me, I have heard Judge Judy's whiny voice more in the past two days than I care to in about eight lifetimes. Everybody does NOT love Raymond anymore, but MYTV doesn't want me to forget that he's on. Game shows, AccessEntertainmentTonightinHollywood, all run together like drool on a baby's bib. And with hockey now almost entirely on national cable channels, the only way to hear Rick and Jim, and the pre- and post-game coverage, is to listen to the radio. Which, unlike the tv, does not have a mute button.
----
It wasn't supposed to be this way anymore. Until a few years ago, "sweeps" periods were a necessarily big deal for local stations, because the main tv ratings service in the US, A.C. Nielsen, relied on paper diaries to record detailed demographics on watchers of programs only four months out of the year. November, February and May (and to a lesser extent, July, when fewer are watching anything) became the ways that local stations set their ad rates. Not surprisingly, the networks got in the habit of saving their best material for these months; the locals had less control over content, but they reacted by ramping up what they could (mainly their local news "special reports") and by advertising the shit out of their Judge Judies and whatnot.
Gradually, the Nielsen people have been phasing out diaries, from largest markets to smaller ones, in favor of more sophisticated "people meters" which record not only what show is on a set (as their older hardware always did) but the key demographics about who is watching that show. This data now gets recorded and reported 365 days a year, so there should no longer be an incentive for stations to try souping up viewship in the traditional sweeps periods.
Buffalo, a mid-market, got the people meters about two years ago. I hoped, as had reportedly been the case in Boston, that this would make the special reports and cranked-up promos go away. Well, I rarely watch tv news, so I can't speak for whether the Why Guy is sampling dog foods on News4 at 6, but the entertainment ads are just as pushy as ever- if not more so.
So, out of curiosity, comes the question: Hows about you?
(Sorry to the ferners; I forgot to put a "not applicable" ticky for you.)
[Poll #976639]
----
The dogs got me up again within half an hour of their feeding. There was a rabbit in the compost heap and a duck on top of our neighbor's garage, so you can hardly blame them. I therefore have been up ever since, trying not to wonder too much why Judge Judy is handling speeding tickets all of a sudden.
Want to learn more about my day? Be sure to tune in tonight for another sp.... oh, forget it.
Not the she-May; I love her. Nor is this a slam on the approximately 8,000 people (including May) who are having birthdays this month. In fact, I'm going to be coming out with early one-to-a-customer birthday posts to all of you Maybabes starting next week, cause all of you deserve an entry all your own.
I also have no objections to Mothers Day, college graduations, my church's confirmation or any of the other observances of the coming days. Nor does the weather particularly suck. Rather, my Nay to May is entirely directed at the media, who since early last week have been bombarding our airwaves, tv and radio both, with nonstop ads for the "sweeps month" programming on the local stations.
You know the ones. The local news teams all dress up their "special reports," usually on the most lurid of subjects (onetime local powerhouse Channel 7, the one Bruce Almighty worked for, was famed for saving their exposes of prostitution for sweeps weeks). Some anchors risk life and limb eating tainted food or getting unsafe plastic surgery, and other stations monkey-see and monkey-do as soon as these hit the airwaves.
Even worse, these efforts are usually plugged, on tv but even more on radio, with nonstop plugs for the stations' own ::koff:: entertainment shows. God help me, I have heard Judge Judy's whiny voice more in the past two days than I care to in about eight lifetimes. Everybody does NOT love Raymond anymore, but MYTV doesn't want me to forget that he's on. Game shows, AccessEntertainmentTonightinHollywood, all run together like drool on a baby's bib. And with hockey now almost entirely on national cable channels, the only way to hear Rick and Jim, and the pre- and post-game coverage, is to listen to the radio. Which, unlike the tv, does not have a mute button.
----
It wasn't supposed to be this way anymore. Until a few years ago, "sweeps" periods were a necessarily big deal for local stations, because the main tv ratings service in the US, A.C. Nielsen, relied on paper diaries to record detailed demographics on watchers of programs only four months out of the year. November, February and May (and to a lesser extent, July, when fewer are watching anything) became the ways that local stations set their ad rates. Not surprisingly, the networks got in the habit of saving their best material for these months; the locals had less control over content, but they reacted by ramping up what they could (mainly their local news "special reports") and by advertising the shit out of their Judge Judies and whatnot.
Gradually, the Nielsen people have been phasing out diaries, from largest markets to smaller ones, in favor of more sophisticated "people meters" which record not only what show is on a set (as their older hardware always did) but the key demographics about who is watching that show. This data now gets recorded and reported 365 days a year, so there should no longer be an incentive for stations to try souping up viewship in the traditional sweeps periods.
Buffalo, a mid-market, got the people meters about two years ago. I hoped, as had reportedly been the case in Boston, that this would make the special reports and cranked-up promos go away. Well, I rarely watch tv news, so I can't speak for whether the Why Guy is sampling dog foods on News4 at 6, but the entertainment ads are just as pushy as ever- if not more so.
So, out of curiosity, comes the question: Hows about you?
(Sorry to the ferners; I forgot to put a "not applicable" ticky for you.)
[Poll #976639]
----
The dogs got me up again within half an hour of their feeding. There was a rabbit in the compost heap and a duck on top of our neighbor's garage, so you can hardly blame them. I therefore have been up ever since, trying not to wonder too much why Judge Judy is handling speeding tickets all of a sudden.
Want to learn more about my day? Be sure to tune in tonight for another sp.... oh, forget it.