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!