Why TV Sweeps Needs to Die

[Commentary] In today's multichannel, multiscreen environment, what had once been a greatly anticipated quarterly event -- the sweeps periods -- has become, well, somewhat unimportant.

One problem has been a broadcast season devoid of new breakout hits and marked by ratings erosion at several long-running shows, while cable continues to attract more viewers. ESPN's "Monday Night Football" was the season's second-highest rated show among adults from 18 to 49, an accomplishment that would have been inconceivable just a few years back. But there's another problem with sweeps: the weakness of its methodology and the growing strength of year-round ratings. Nielsen sends out hundreds of thousands of diaries every November, February, May and July -- the four quarterly sweeps periods -- to measure shows' ratings in local households. This season Nielsen will mail out TV diaries to 185 of the country's smaller TV markets. But diaries depend too much on viewers' participation; have poor response rates, particularly with young demographics and ethnic groups; and suffer from the proliferation of TV sets in every household, which makes it harder to track what everyone's watching. Sweeps periods are also starting to hurt broadcast networks. Because broadcasters load so much of their best programming -- new episodes, specials, event TV -- into sweeps periods, they're left with depleted resources to compete during the rest of the year.

It is time for Nielsen to play its part in eliminating diaries -- and sweeps -- by continually measuring all local TV markets all the time. This is what advertisers -- who advertise throughout the year, after all -- have been asking for. Eliminating the sweeps will give programmers at the broadcast networks some much needed flexibility in scheduling.