Rantings of a Lunatic

Wow, as every post starts, its been a while. And (un)fortunately, this most recent lapse of content posting has found me with an invigorated mental outlook. I have been working a fair amount of course, and only this week has it really slowed down. I know that will disappear next week, or the following at the latest as we go into July sweeps. Its the sweeps period that nobody really pays attention to, but that we still have to involve ourselves for the same. I personally would like to know who thought up the current sweeps system so that I could go kick them.

I believe that all it does is to breed complacency and build a system where for 4 months out of the year the media goes gung-ho and tries to impress their viewers, then they sit back for a few months and rest on the laurels they won in the last sweeps period. I think this metered outlook actually stagnates and diminishes the product that we put to market. If I were to have the power to change the system, I would make the sweeps period an unknown. I am not sure how things work completely, but if Nielsen is publishing the ratings, couldn’t they just say that its going to be sometime between July 3rd and November 1st, and that when those numbers come out they will drive the ratings for the following segmentation? With all of the stations knowing when sweeps is, they can gear up and plan on certain stories in advance, which isn’t bad in and of its self. However, isn’t the point of ratings to get a picture of how people watch television? Isn’t it supposed to be a cross-section in time of how the stations compare to each other? If we know you are measuring at a certain time, aren’t we more likely to make our performance in that segment of time a more stellar performance? With all of the stations working so hard at this one point in time, aren’t the ratings off?

I feel that my solution is better because as soon as the stations have no idea when they are being judged then the level of reporting doesn’t have to be high for 4 months out of the year. In contrast they have to be up 12 months of the year. Thats a need for 300% higher quality product. And it may seem weird for me to say this, but looking at what I do, and how we measure our website where I work, I feel that I am in the position that I am describing. Every month I have to report back on how we are doing, and I have an excel sheet full of metrics that goes well into the multi-character column headings. Its difficult, and the work is constant, and as I alluded earlier, it seems as if we have 3 maybe 4 “slow” weeks throughout the year. And we need those slow weeks to sort of recharge a little, but we are always putting what we hope is our best foot forward. We don’t have the luxury of quarterly performance reporting, we do it monthly, and sometimes more often than that.