Typically, Nielsen measures sweeps in all media markets nationwide in November, February and May. A little-noticed sweep is also conducted in July.
Stations were looking to pass on the February sweep because the digital transition was scheduled to take place on Feb. 17. That huge change was expected to skew the results too much to make holding a sweeps worthwhile, and Nielsen then said it would postpone the sweep to March. Many stations told the measurement company they didn’t want to pay for that either, but Nielsen reminded stations that they were contractually obligated to do so and that it had already spent money preparing to run the March sweeps.
Nielsen gathers ratings information in several different ways. Local people meters in the top 10 markets gather the most precise demographic information about what people are watching locally, while people meters across the country acquire national demographic information, such as how CBS Television Distribution’s Oprah did among women 18-49 in any given week as well as in households.
Set-top meters in the top 50 markets measure what people are watching, but do not measure demographic information. Markets below the top 50 are measured with diaries only. That’s why sweeps remain important in those markets, and why it takes about a month for those measurements to be tallied.
But stations and syndicators have several reasons why it makes little sense to go ahead in March. First, no legitimate comparison is available: February is a darker, colder month, so people tend to watch less TV. And this year, daylight-saving time starts March 8, so even fewer people will be in front of their sets. With no apples-to-apples comparison, sales reps have nothing to match performances up with when they are trying to sell ads.
read the rest at Broadcasting & Cable.
I don’t know why the US Gov’t didn’t in the first place announce the digital transition in the summer months to start with.
Ben, of course doing it in the summer in the first place would have made sense. I think that answers the question about why the government scheduled it in the middle of the season
Actually since February is a colder month, people tend to watch more TV. Unless they’d rather go out and freeze. But that still isn’t a big excuse. I agree that the switch should have been made in June, after the season was over, or atleast in March, but of course they picked February, the worst month to do it in.
How difficult would it have been when the gov’t announced the delay of the transition – which was well before February, to reinstate the February sweeps?
Ben, the delay wasn’t actually signed into law until Feb 11. And even if it had been done a month prior to that, logistically, it would not have been possible for Nielsen to pull it off with such short notice.
The answer to your question is simple: We are dealing with the government. They rarely do anything that would be in the best interest of the parties involved.
In this case, if they were to listen to the networks, we’d all but never have a transition to digital.
I don’t understand the logic that because February is a “darker, colder month” that less people watch TV. That makes no sense to me. It is also contradictory to the latter statement that because Daylight Savings is in March then even less people TV (presumably because it lighter and warmer out).
I’d say March sweeps are a bit more *useless* now that broadcast stations may-or-may-not have converted to digital, and people may-or-may-not have converters, yadda yadda yadda…
At least when Nielsen planned March sweeps, it was assumed that all broadcast stations would have completed their digital transitions, and viewers would have had two weeks to adapt to the change. Now, they have to deal with confusion, particularly in the small markets, because digital transition has been scattered. Plus, converter boxes were not available as promised for a couple million people. Now Nielsen has to figure out what’s going on in every market, on every network.
Eddie, the point of the folks in the article was because of the environmental differences that March and Feb sweeps were not comparable. Viewing is higher in Feb because of environmental factors.