News Desk Nuggets

I have a number of 'nuggets' to share from the News Assignment Desk!

Final tallies (for now) are in for our weekend 'Heroes Help Northeast Ohio' drive. And Northeast Ohio, you came through yet again!

At last count, nearly sixty-seven pounds of food, twenty-five hundred dollars, eight bins of toys and sixteen bins of coats were collected Saturday at various Wal Marts around town. wkyc, the Cleveland Foodbank, Akron Foodbank, The Salvation Army and Coats for Kids all thank you for your unprecedented generosity.

Today is the first day of November sweeps! Keep tabs on wkyc.com, wkyc's facebook page, wkyc's Twitter page, YouTube and our daily broadcasts for promos & teases for upcoming stories the entire wkyc staff is working on for the next month. You can be sure these stories will help, inform, intrigue, and entertain the viewer watching. The ratings period ends on November 24, 2010.

Part of the Channel 3 newsroom is getting a face lift. After we switched over to a new computer and editing system, which allows everyone to work from their work stations rather than having to work in an editing bay, a more efficient work space flow was devised.

The Metromix area, Momslikeme area, editing bays, and photographers work room are being reconfigured and some of the walls are gonna come tumbling down!

And the newsroom is busy gearing up for what looks to be a very active and exciting election day on November 2, 2010. Make sure you get out and vote!

Everyone, please have a very safe yet spooky Halloween weekend!

February Sweeps 2010 kicks off

Amidst the busy week I detailed in my last entry, to top it off, February 2010 Sweeps kicked off today!

News Director Rita Andolsen rallied the troops not only with her inspirational news room speech but 'treating' the news room to delicious masterpieces from The Chocolate Bar!

It's just wrong the amount of rich, decadent chocolate in the newsroom today!


Be sure to tune into wkyc all month long for stories to keep our customers connected to what's truly important to them...and give them information to help with what matters most.

For example, Monica Robins kicked off the month with her masterful piece on Connor-- a little boy who has a rare disorder called Dopa-Responsive Dystonia. No one really knew what Connor had until his mother Cynthia took it upon herself to research his symptoms and track down doctors who would listen to her theories. Not giving up or taking no for an answer, his doctor put Connor on new medication which proved to be 'miraculous' in Connor's recovery.

You won't want to miss a single story in the coming weeks.....stay tuned!

A little tension in the air during November sweeps

We are in the midst of November sweeps.

For me, the concept of 'sweeps' always exasperates me for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, my belief and philosophy is that I should be giving my best EVERY day of the year--and so should my co-workers.

We all should pull out all the stops 365 days out of the year, not just during February, May, July, and October-November.

We all should be giving our customers the best, most informative and exciting stories year round to grab them and make them come back to wkyc for more. We should all be helping our fellow co-workers in anyway we can. We all should strive for perfection every single day leaving no room for error or sub-par performances.

The word 'mediocrity' is not in my vocabulary.


I understand that the industry and the sales department need these specified months to establish sales rates which ultimate pays for all of our bills and salaries. But again, we should be 'bringing it' every day and consistently at the top of our game.


The other major issue which boggles my mind is how so many people believe or think that our performance and our performance alone dictates our ratings.

Get serious. There are so many factors completely out of our control which effect our ratings. The lead in to our news shows play a major role. When the Jay Leno show tanks, regardless of how brilliant the 11pm news may be or how hard we all worked, the audience may be lacking because they strayed during Leno.


And then you have the antics of the local competition. Many of them pull out ridiculous and oftentimes deceitful gimmicks to reel in their audience. They tease a story all day long and their tease has nothing to do with the story that actually airs. Some stations have lots of giveaways to get viewers to tune in --giveaways which have absolutely nothing to do with the story at hand. And then you have those stations which 'bare' all and air the titillating stories to catch the eye of a certain demographic.


A bit of disharmony the last few days. Not sure if the 'sweeps' bug has gotten under everyone's craw, but I have to be honest--recently throughout the course of a day, 3 or 4 people will come talk to me about the SAME topic and all of them have differing stories. One will tell me 'this is supposed to happen' and the next will relay the total opposite scenario. Then someone will say 'so and so' is doing this and yet another person will come up to me and give me a different name.


Thank God I am a problem solver, get to the bottom of the truth and nip it in the bud before anything goes awry!


I've been in the business for nearly a quarter of a century and the way I feel about sweeps today is the exact same way I felt about it 25 years ago.


I will continue being a team player with my sunny disposition and giving 100 percent EVERY single day, not just during sweeps!

May Sweeps

Tomorrow kicks off our May 'Sweeps' period. In television news, 'sweeps' is the time of the year when the competition is fiercer than usual, every second of every newscast is precisely mapped out, and each television station pulls out all the stops. There is extra-special programming, often-times more investigative reports or longer, in-depth reports.

I have to admit, here at Channel 3 News, we treat every day of the year as if it were 'sweeps.' We work just as hard during non-sweep months as we do in the thick of a ratings book. We effort original, thought-provoking stories to teach, inform, and entertain our customers every day of the year. Some days we succeed, and I guess, some days we may not.

However, May 'sweeps' officially kicks off tomorrow and runs through May 21st. There are four major 'sweeps' months: February, May, July, and November (some say October is a minor 'sweeps' month as well).

During these months, networks and local affiliates hope to boost television ratings and attract new viewers, especially in a specified demographic, in order to regulate the fees set for advertisers.

There is a lot more to the whole 'sweeps' phenomenon than I can do justice. It's a very precise process. It involves stats, strategy, and some guesswork as to what your viewers like seeing the most. It reminds me of the game of baseball, where there seems to be a stat for just about everything. You have the ratings for each local show that airs during the course of a day. Then you have the Monday thru Friday ratings, the weekend ratings and the ratings Monday thru Sunday. Then each show is broken down minute by minute so you can get a gauge as to what kind of stories the audience likes. If there is a spike (either down or up) at a certain time of a show, you see what aired during that time to get an idea of what your audience really enjoys.

I've babbled on long enough on the semantics of 'sweeps.'

We here at Channel 3 News have been working for months to bring our viewers the most interesting and informative stories during May. Please click on the attached links to get a sneak peek into what we have in store. Monica Robins shares her in-depth story on her interview with a courageous woman coming back after having acid thrown at her by her attacker.

All of our reporters will help you save money in our "30 Days, 30 Ways to Save"Series.

Sit back, relax, and get ready for a great 'May Sweeps' from us to you!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=luhZDwUc6tw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2KfQou8jr4&feature=user

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