Sweeps shows networks’ lack of class

November isn’t just a turkey season when we give thanks.
It’s also TV sweeps month.

While for many families it’s a time for caring and
sharing, for television networks it’s time to battle for more
viewers.

Sweeps month is crucial for television networks. For those who
don’t know, November is the time when the number of viewers
in the Nielsen ratings, the deciding factor for a TV
station’s future advertising rates, is racked up.

Advertising money is the funding bloodline for television
networks, so television stations will do anything to get viewers
watching during sweeps. Thus I personally like to call this time of
year the Month of Shame.

For example, Fox is going to present “Celebrity Boxing
3.” Ah. There’s nothing like some good old fashioned
humiliation to make viewers tune in.

The show is like a train wreck; you just have to stop and look.
Of course, NBC is going the classy, nostalgic route by showing the
traditional Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. But if nobody
tunes in for that, it also has a “Jennifer Lopez in
Concert” program just to be on the safe side. ABC is doing
its patriotic duty, showing the “United We Stand”
marathon concert in Washington D.C. and is milking American
jingoism for all its worth.

Folks will say it’s the same old jive, and TV is just
trying to use shock or merit or whatever it does best to get you
watching. From tasteless to even more tasteless, even I can’t
really tell the difference.

Last night’s “Crossing Jordan” on NBC featured
a terrorist bombing of a building and the ensuing manhunt. In light
of events in the news, this episode strikes uncomfortably close to
home, and it’s hard to say whether the echo is helping
America cope with its loss, or just capitalizing on the
sensationalism of real-life tragedies.

However, this isn’t the TV networks’ fault. They are
just following what we want to watch. And dagnabbit, if we want to
watch scantily-clad, impossibly beautiful women catwalk down
runways like in CBS’s “The Victoria’s Secret
Fashion Show,” then why would the networks deny us that?

That’s just it ““ they never would. Networks know our
lives are unpleasant and we need our daily dose of fantasy to
distract ourselves from that disturbing fact.

TV is back in action, and it’s a good thing … I think.
Television plays a dual role in our lives; it’s a vice and
comfort rolled into one. We watch as a way to cope with reality in
general by displacing it with another world that is absolutely
devoid of substance.

Sweeps reminds us that our television viewing is a reality
created by commerce, where the sincerity of heartfelt sentiments is
proportional to the money they earn. With all the celebrity cameo
appearances and plot twists, television networks take advantage of
their greatest herding titillations, and we’re the cows.