Phil Williams, WTVF-Channel 5’s top newsman, is an old-school gumshoe whose dogged reporting has frightened cops, gamblers, and high-level government officials. But even Williams is vulnerable to the kind of low-hanging exposés this month of sweeps tends to inspire. For example, just a few weeks ago he abandoned his hard-hitting news stories and instead targeted a working-class Asian woman who can barely speak English.
The woman helps run Hong Kong Express, a Chinese eatery in Hillsboro Village. Citing reports from the Metro Health Department, Williams reported that Hong Kong Express is the most unsanitary restaurant in Nashville. With the camera running, Williams entered the restaurant and asked the woman if he could peek inside her kitchen. The woman, clearly not very media savvy, politely refused. In broken English, she explained her reasons, which only made her look more culpable for the state of the failing restaurant. The story won’t win any journalism awards, but it was a ratings winner and an easy triumph for Williams. Never mind that any freshman communications major could have executed the story—or that the woman looked like she was about to cry.
Welcome to television sweeps, a monthlong media carnival during which no story is too sleazy, shallow, or silly. For four months of the year—November, February, May, and July—television stations set their advertising prices based on ratings. Williams’ piece, titled the “Dirty Dozen,” was a multi-part series that launched this month’s sweeps.
During sweeps, local television stations across the country wage a dramatic fight for viewers. Occasionally, these battles provide viewers with important scoops and interesting, creative journalism. More often, however, they give rise to glib, sensational reporting designed exclusively to boost ratings. Invariably, more sophisticated viewers are left rolling their eyes.
On the surface, such strategies might make good business sense. But in an era of dwindling television viewership and growing interest in cable and the Internet, the sweeps frenzy is akin to burning down your house to stay warm. Stations achieve instant gratification—sometimes—at the expense of everything else.
Williams has reported on Nashville’s dirtiest restaurants at least two other times—although some of his competitors place the number at five. He explains his recurring interest in the topic rather simply. “I get more calls and e-mails on this subject than any other,” he wrote in an e-mail to the Scene. “It’s useful information that viewers crave—and, in the end, our goal is to serve the viewers.”
And at least to some extent, Williams’ defense is right on. Who doesn’t want to know which of their favorite restaurants is as dirty as a Florida election? At the Hong Kong Express, health inspectors found “evidence of roaches.” Inspectors also cited the eatery for not having soap or towels in the bathroom and for spotting employees handling egg rolls without washing their hands. Another fast food joint Williams exposed had problems with flies, and one employee was caught scratching her eyes and face before handling food. Williams also reported about restaurants plagued with mice droppings, cockroaches, and ants crawling around the kitchen floor.
But while Williams prompted rather visceral reactions from his viewers, he has done little original reporting on such stories. During sweeps months especially, viewers see—in abundance—stories like Williams’ hit-and-run dirty restaurant pieces.
“A station in every market runs down to the health department, pulls the inspection report, and puts it on the air,” says Jack MacKenzie, a television consultant for Iowa-based Frank N. Magid Associates. “What I don’t like about that is that there’s no enterprising and no journalism involved. Let’s go find something that the audience can’t find out on their own.”
And that might include, for example, stories about why the restaurants on Williams’ list were even allowed to keep their doors open. How did their owners manage to open restaurants in the first place? Does the health department explain its laundry list of regulations in a way restaurant owners can easily understand?
A more thoughtful approach to Williams’ Hong Kong Express story would have targeted not the overmatched Asian woman but Jody Faison, an articulate, well-known, experienced restaurateur who had not one, but two, restaurants on the “Dirty Dozen” list. But Williams did not interview him, presumably because Faison would have had something to say, adding a gray layer of complication to a story whose basic appeal—to viewers and to Williams too—was its theme of right versus wrong. Almost certainly, Faison would not have shuddered helplessly in front of the unyielding glare of the TV camera.
It’s worth pointing out that if you were to poll local media observers about the best TV reporters, Williams would place in the top three, if not win outright. That’s precisely the problem with sweeps—it can turn otherwise good reporters into ratings sluts. And for every viewer reeled in, the argument goes, two or three others tune out. At the very least, those who don’t watch TV news have their negative attitudes confirmed when they catch a sweeps promo.
“Local television news is coming to a crisis,” says Richard Campbell, director of the MTSU journalism school. “They are losing viewers, but so long as they are getting good advertisers there is no impetus to change.”
That’s why we see the same old sweeps stories from market to market. Media experts are always amused by the various generic segments like the stories about roaches in restaurant kitchens. Other journalistic gems include “What’s Lurking Behind Your Kitchen Sink?” or “Who’s Parking in Handicapped Parking Spaces?” and the old standby, “What Kind of People Are Busing Your Kids?”
"Shoot or don't shoot?"
One common sweeps story that made its way to Nashville is “Shoot or Don’t Shoot.” Back in May, Channel 5’s Mark Bellinger reported a multi-part series featuring hammy actors squaring off in some sort of contrived confrontation. The narrator then asked the viewer whether one of the two protagonists should “shoot or don’t shoot?” In one of the situations the station aired, a pair of entangled motorists pulled over and prepared to fight. One drew a baseball bat and approached the car. Now what should the other driver do, the announcer asked—“shoot or don’t shoot?” Incidentally, those were the only two options. “Drive the hell away” was not on the list.
Of course, the worst stories are the ones that are so generic that TV consultant MacKenzie can damn them with a very simple litmus test. “If the last three words in any story read ‘can kill you,’ that’s a bad sweeps story,” he says. In other words, that would include any stories titled, “Things in Your Kitchen That Can Kill You” or “Things in Your Closet That Can Kill You.”
Some local sweeps stories might pass MacKenzie’s litmus test, but not much else. WSMV-Channel 4’s normally strong Jennifer Johnson reported an embarrassing multi-part series this month called “Don’t Shoot My Dog.”
WKRN-Channel 2 once aired a three-part series called “Apocalypse Now,” while another local station reported a segment with the title “Is There a Hell?” And last May, Channel 5 pretty much went to hell when the station’s Nick Beres aired “The Spring Break Tapes” during that sweeps period. Capturing on film the drunken and drugged sexual escapades of students on spring break, the story brought big ratings—and a lawsuit by two of the girls pictured in the segment.
The multi-part story might have gone down as the dimmest, dumbest, sleaziest story in local sweeps history were it not for the body of work of Francene Cucinello. In May 1999, Cucinello, who then worked at Channel 4, interviewed a psychic to help find the missing Janet March. Citing clues from the psychic, Cucinello hunted throughout the city for March and even stopped at a local boat dock.
Then last July, Cucinello reported a story featuring a convicted serial rapist who offered advice on how women could avoid predators like him. She reported part of the segment from a dimly lit bedroom with an open window looming conspicuously in the background.
Channel 4 news director J.T. Thompson has this to say about Cucinello’s story. “I don’t have to defend a story like that. It gives people information. I am very proud of everything we put on the air.”
Asked about other recent Channel 4 sweeps stories, including one last May about prostitutes who specialize in servicing truck drivers, Thompson says, “I don’t regret putting a single story on the air.”
Sometimes the promotions for sweeps stories are as bad—or worse—than the stories themselves. Last week, for example, Channel 5 aired a story about how to prevent your child from being sexually abused. The promo for the story featured a man combing a young girl’s hair, then stroking her neck.
Surprisingly, the fledgling WZTV-Fox 17, whose parent company gave us that television masterpiece “When Animals Attack,” has eschewed sensationalism during the November sweeps period. That’s not to say the station has offered great journalism. In fact, most of the Fox stories sound like they were lifted from The Tennessean’s “Shortcuts” page. The station, which just started airing original reporting last July, has shown a light touch during its first sweeps—with stories on headaches, dream homes, and pet insurance, not to mention ghost sightings.
“We’re not going to do sleaze and some of those seedy stories,” says Ken Smith, the station’s well-respected news director. “We want to do stories that appeal to a wide range of people. We got a lot of feedback on our ghost and dream home stories.”
Is there a market for news?
Of course, justifying news stories based on prompt “feedback” highlights the problem with television sweeps. Good journalism often gives viewers and readers tough and complex information that they can’t instantly process. Bad journalism typically does the opposite. That doesn’t mean that television news directors shouldn’t try “to serve the viewers”—to borrow their rather lofty phrase. It just means they should try airing stories that are demanding and significant. In the end, those are the stories that people remember and talk about anyway.
MTSU’s Campbell says he never hears his students or colleagues begin a conversation with, “Did you see that great story on television last night?” That’s in large part because local television newscasts miss the big, sweeping stories. “The most important story in this state is the tax situation, and it’s one that everybody is interested in,” he says. “If I’m a television reporter I’m going to look at that issue, and yet you don’t see anybody touch those stories. Instead, what television news tends to do is wait around till the next protest and interview some yahoo with a placard.”
But is there a market for serious news stories? Or do people really want to watch segments on haunted libraries, dirty restaurants, and how to talk your way out of a speeding ticket? Campbell says that it’s possible to offer good journalism and draw audiences.
Perhaps he’s right. A recent study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism identified four stations that earned an “A” grade for their newscasts. And each of those stations witnessed ratings successes. One of the stations, a Fox affiliate no less, aired only a few crime stories, while a high percentage (13.3 percent) of its stories were about economics and business. A station official even bragged that his station couldn’t cover a car chase if it wanted to.
Still, the study was far from comprehensive. Meanwhile, there is growing evidence that stations are less interested in news and more interested in hit-and-run sensational stories. Recently in Chicago, station WBBM scrapped reporter Carol Marin’s highly ambitious “news experiment.” Marin, a well-regarded journalist, had hoped that a more serious newscast with longer stories might set a trend.
In Nashville, few stations seem to be on the cutting edge of anything. They’re just giving viewers what they think viewers want—a media strategy that’s about as sophisticated as a story on wild dogs. Ironically, in the end, TV stations may discover that by pandering to the viewers, they may ultimately alienate them. “Our company certainly believes that what viewers want is to watch the news,” says MacKenzie. “They are busy people, they have important things going on in their lives, and if they’re going to watch a newscast, it better be important, it better be relevant to their lives, and it better be local. We believe the stations that do that are going to survive.”
Local television reporters, who often are just doing what they’re told, try to put the best spin they can on sweeps, saying it gives them more time to report stories and often more freedom. Sometimes, they say, they can even find that elusive story that earns acclaim from news directors and journalism professors alike.
Channel 4’s Nancy Amons had perhaps the best sweeps story this month with a report on Metro ambulance response times. While the topic is a rather generic television news story, it became an important exposé in Amons’ capable hands. For example, she noted that, during a three-month period, 21 people waited more than 30 minutes for ambulances. In addition, she concluded that the Metro Fire Department, which handles emergency calls, has “failed to change with the times.” Nashville, viewers learned, has nearly the same number of ambulances as it did 20 years ago, despite having double the number of emergency calls now as two decades ago.
Amons also interviewed one woman whose daughter had suffered a life-threatening asthma attack. The mother kept waiting before finally driving her daughter to the hospital herself. Amons replayed the tape of that 911 call for the viewers—sensational for sure, but telling nonetheless. The tape revealed a police operator transferring the call to the fire department. For a full 44 seconds—an eternity if your child’s life is at stake—no one answered.
Channel 2’s Dan MacDonald also seems to have found the right blend of sensationalism and substance in his sweeps stories. Last May, MacDonald, an adjunct broadcasting professor at MTSU, disclosed that many of the people listed on the state’s sex offender list don’t actually live at their stated address. It was a little hyperbolic at times, but MacDonald’s piece exposed a much-ballyhooed state program for failing to achieve its singular goal.
MacDonald reported another strong story recently about student abuse of over-the-counter drugs—from Benadryl to Tylenol PM. MacDonald interviewed kids who talked about their own experiences with various medications, and he interviewed health experts as well. The story had to be eye-opening to any parent.
Of course, like any TV reporter, MacDonald has reported sweeps pieces he’s not likely to brag about. When he worked at Channel 5, MacDonald tackled snake handling at Southern churches. “It seemed interesting at the time, but it seemed like we did four or five nights on it. It was just overkill,” he says. “We don’t even have a snake-handling church in Nashville.”
Channel 4’s Dennis Ferrier recalls a recent story he did about Tennessee-trained bush-pilot missionaries in Ecuador exploring some of the most remote stretches of the world to find possible Christian converts. For the story, Ferrier spent nearly two weeks in Ecuador covering the kinds of people TV viewers rarely get to see. And the story had depth; one of Ferrier’s segments ran nearly nine minutes. That’s a naturally intriguing story—we should see more stories like this one on our local television newscasts. And, yes, it did well in the ratings.
But Ferrier notes that one of the highest-rated stories he ever did was an exposé a few years ago about unsanitary hotels. He acknowledges that the story was not one of his better moments, but he doesn’t seem to have repressed any of it. Off the top of his head he can quickly rattle off all the “substances” Channel 4 discovered on hotel bed sheets. “We found dog hairs, urine, all different kinds of semen, vaginal secretions—we even found it on the pillow—huge drool, and just a lot of mucus all over the place.”
This is television sweeps.
