What are sweeps weeks, and how do (you think) they influence media content?
A weblog for Pete Ellertsen's mass communications students at Benedictine University Springfield.
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About Me
- Pete
- Springfield (Ill.), United States
- I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.
7 comments:
Sweeps weeks are the weeks that he media company measure the viewers through ratings. I believe at this time you see an abundance of advertisements getting the viewing audience to tune in to the stations during that time to get an higher count of the viweing audiences
Sweeps week are weeks in February, May, and November when major local television ratings are compiled... This influences the media content because there is a urgency to have the best rated and most watched shows on television and to insure that you are outweighing the competition.
sweeps week is when shows/stations find out the various ammount of viewers that watch their station or specific show which allows the stations or shows to release new shows or new programs to increase their viewer rating so that they can sell their commercial space for more. This influences the media in a way that forces them to provide their more interesting stories or news headlines on that specific week.
Nielson Media Research is a company that reviews records of viewing figures for television. A few times a year, the company sends out diaries to sample homes to specific homes in different viewing spectrums to make a record of the shows they watched. The diaries are then "swept" up and analyzed by Neilson Media Research and viewing figures of shows are produced. This is important to the shows because the more ratings they get, the more advertising they get during commercials.
Sweeps began 50 years ago when the AC Nielsen Co., which dominates the television rating business, mailed out diaries to selected households across the country and asked the residents to record their television viewing habits. Because analyzing so many handwritten diaries was labor-intensive and expensive, Nielsen couldn't measure viewing habits year-round and decided to extrapolate from four annual surveys. After each survey, the diaries are collected by region, starting in the Northeast and then sweeping—whence the name—across the country. Networks then use the results to set local ad rates for the next three months.
WHAT ARE SWEEP WEEKS: At various times throughout the year, Nielsen Media Research, the company which records viewing figures for television programs, sends out diaries to sample homes in the various markets around the country, for the residents to record the shows they watched.
These diaries are then "swept" up, and the results analysed to produce viewing figures for the various programs and channels. These are important, because it's based on these that the networks set their advertising rates. The more people watch a show, the more they can charge for the commercials during it.
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/11188
By getting information from these dairies it helps the media easily characterize a society as a whole as well as popular television programs feeds the viewer what they want to see it helps narrow down what the peoples' interest are to a certain audience and what is most viewed might even get another time/spot on air due to the many viewers it attracts.
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