Another Sweeps Has Passed

I've only worked in T.V a year and a half, but it seems each ratings period is tougher than the last.

Ratings, or "sweeps", happens 4 times a years. Feb, May, July, and November. This is when the number of people watching TV really matters. Our rating, in comparison to the competition, helps us determine what we can charge for advertising. The higher the rating, the more money we can charge for advertising. Makes sense?

The most important newscast is the 10 o'clock news. And as an NBC affiliate, that means the new Jay Leno show is our new "lead-in", the show which leads into our news. If the lead-in has a good rating, then the news usually has a good rating too. This is because people are lazy and will usually watch the news on the channel they're already watching.

Jay Leno is not my favourite person. His average rating during the month of November was a 4.0.

At our competition, the CBS affiliate, they have shows like "The Mentalist", all the "CSI" shows, "Medium", and "NCIS" at their lead-ins. Needless to say, these shows are more popular than Jay Leno, with average ratings of 14.0.

This puts KSL at a huge disadvantage. This means my job, getting people to watch the news, becomes even more important. That's where my promos come in. We bust our butts to make eye-catching promos for specific stories. The promo will run for a few days, trying to get as many eyeballs as possible to see the promo so they will purposely tune-in to our news when the story runs.

I am happy to report, after a tough start... WE KICKED BUTT!
This is from the press release:

"At 10 p.m., KSL 5 News was the nation’s top-performing newscast among NBC affiliates.

Monday through Friday, KSL 5 News at 10 grew its lead-in ratings 253 percent. The Jay Leno Show provided an average 4.0 rating Monday through Friday and the average rating for KSL News at 10 was a 10.1."

What was the rating at the competition? 9.1. This means they lost viewers every night at 10 p.m., while our news GAINED viewers every night at ten. People are actually changing the channel to watch our news!

I am sooooooo proud to work for a quality T.V. stations like KSL. And I'm so glad we have amazing stories to promote. I've already posted a couple of my promos from this past sweeps. Here are my final 2.

The first is for another investigative piece. One of our reporters went undercover with the "Utah Valley Special Victims Unit." As soon as they told me that, I had a brilliant idea for the promo. Watch and see!




Here is my other promo. It was for a Carole Mikita piece. She's the religion reporter. This means she covers everything LDS-related.

The story behind this story is amazing too. You see, the LDS church is very tight-lipped when it comes to the media, even if the story we're trying to cover is a positive one.

Carole has amazing contacts at the church and once she found out a missionary couple played a huge role in helping kids in Cambodia, she set out to find them. Unfortunately, the Missionary department of the church didn't want to play ball, and never found (refused to find) this couple for Carole.

Days went by with no luck and Carole, who is LDS herself, told me she was at the point where she was praying and asking the Lord to help her find this couple. At the last minute, the head of the Humanitarian Department at the church came to Carole and handed her a piece of paper. It had the name and number of the missionary couple, who were happy to talk about their humanitarian mission in Cambodia. It was amazing to see Carole get teary-eyed as she told me this story.

That's another reason I love KSL. We have the Lord on our side. (KSL is owned by the LDS church.)

Here's the promo for the story.



And here's Carole's story.