Opening the Bag of Tricks

Whew! Well, I got that out of my system. I guess one of the best things about having a column like this is that when you have something on your mind, you can just open up and vent about it. It's all the rage these days to do this sort of thing, of course. The difference between me and the geometrically increasing number of bloggers is that someone actually asked me to do this. All those folks with their web logs are just "putting it out there," hoping that we will all want to be blessed with their pearls of wisdom. But to anyone who managed to get all the way through last month's rant, thanks.

As you read this, we are deep in the throes of yet another "sweeps" month, and just about everyone out there with a show on the airwaves is pulling every trick out of the bag to get you to watch. Last May, you may recall, I waxed verbose about the whole ratings system. Since this column was spanking new at that time, you may not have read it, so a quick re-cap:

At various times throughout the year, the friendly folks at the Nielsen Company send out diaries to ordinary folks like you and me (well, not like me - I work in the media, so I'm not eligible), so that we can document our viewing habits. Three times a year - February, May and November - those diaries are given the Holy Aura of being the determining factor of how America watches television. That this is a) absurd, and b) completely arbitrary and unfair, does not factor into what passes for thinking in the boardrooms of the networks and the local stations. During these three months of the year, it is absolutely crucial that as many human beings as possible (over the age of 12, but absolutely preferably between the ages of 18 and 45) be gathered in front of the tv sets of our land to watch the very, very special programming that is being offered.

It didn't used to be this way. Here's how it was back in the deep, dark reaches of the past when I was a kid: In September, the networks would begin a "new season." I'm sure that this happened because as long as there has been entertainment offered on a mass scale, listenership/viewership was down during the summer months. When the weather's nice, lots of people find that they spend less time watching other people live their lives and more time living their own. So, as kids go back to school and the temperatures start to cool, folks have fresh programming to spice up all that time indoors. Thus, the idea of the New Season took hold, and became the standard practice. This also made sense because shows could begin their production schedules in the spring and summer, taking advantage of the good weather that was keeping people away from their tv sets, which is particularly crucial if there's location shooting to be done, and have several shows "in the can" by September.

Back in those days, though, the Season was quite a different matter. Since the year is fifty-two weeks long, and nothing can be done about that, it was standard practice to produce twenty-six episodes, filling up half the year. Every now and then, a show might be pre-empted by a special or the like, but from the time the season began in September, you saw nothing but new installments of tv series until sometime in March or April, when the supply of new episodes ran out. Then the shows for that season were re-run, usually in the order that they appeared in their first run.

But of course, it had to get more complicated, didn't it? Somewhere along the line, somebody noticed that tv viewing was way down during the month of December, because people were spending a lot of time either getting ready for or celebrating the Holidays. Networks just hate to waste a first-run episode, so lots of Holiday Specials made their way to the air during that month. So we got treated to the spectacle of Bing Crosby dreaming of a white Christmas or Andy Williams crooning to us that it was the most wonderful time of the year, as they trudged through corn starch snow in heavy coats under hot studio lights in a Christmas Special that was taped in August or September. I remember when, as a kid, I found out that these shows had to be taped so far in advance. I was so sad that the people involved in making the shows had to get into the Christmas Spirit so early in the year, and that it would make it tougher for them to get the spirit when the Holidays actually arrived. No, you don't have to tell me what a Pollyanna I was. I'm quite aware of it.

Anyway, that was, I believe, when networks first began to attempt to manipulate the viewing season, and that relatively benign beginning was what led us to the horrendously labyrinthine morass that television has become today. Now it is not at all uncommon for a rerun to appear only a few weeks into the new season. Usually, it'll be an episode from the previous season that will be billed in all the promos as a "special encore presentation," or some such rot. These special encores never seem to find their way into the sweep months, though. Reruns are anathema when we're "in the book," as sweeps are known in the tv biz. Unless there's a show that a network has no confidence in. Then, it is perfectly acceptable to show a rerun of a show that's a proven winner in place of a new episode of a show that a network thinks is performing poorly.

Those little scheduling quirks are just one of many tricks that are pulled on you in the name of luring you to watch a given programming source. Probably the biggest favorite that the networks love to pull is the one that has come to be known as "stunt casting." You know this one well by now. This is where big-name guest stars come to shows. Sometimes it will be a former cast member coming back to visit, as when Sam Malone or Lilith pay a visit to Frasier. Other times, it will be a big-time star, maybe someone who works primarily in feature films, coming in to play a character who passes through. I mean, gosh, who wouldn't want to see, say, Julia Roberts or Samuel Jackson do a guest shot on The Practice or Everybody Loves Raymond? This little trick has the added advantage of lending a "classy" aura to the show, since it's well known that film actors generally disdain television work. The thinking seems to be that if the big-name actor can be induced to climb down from their haughty pedestal, this must be some mighty compelling material. At least that's what they're hoping you'll think, but let's face it, we all know that no matter how "classy" a star might be, part of the reason that Sally Field keeps showing up on ER playing Maura Tierney's mother is that NBC and Warner Brothers have shoveled copious amounts of money at her.

By far, though, the most odious thing is the way that the networks promote their shows. These promos are viewed as one of the primary ways to induce people to watch tv shows, and I think that the way these things are done is, by and large, truly despicable. They fall into two categories, and the methods are used about equally and often both are employed in the span of one promo. The first category is the T & A factor. If there is any scene in the course of the episode being promoted that shows a person - usually female but not always - in some state of undress, then usually that little snippet will find its way into the promo. The idea is to imply that you will see more of this sort of thing, so you'd better watch. Then, when you actually watch the show, you inevitably find out that the tiny bit that you saw in the promo was, in fact, all that there was to see. The second category is even worse. It's the one where events from the show are removed from context. Often, this will take the form of editing together bits of dialogue that are from completely different parts of the episode. The result is that you are lured into watching thinking that a fiery exchange will take place between two characters, only to find that the conversation never took place. I happen to think that this sort of thing ought to be unethical, but then I'm a bit of a dinosaur, I suppose. I think that this is an awful lot like the adult who tells a kid that he'll pay him a buck to do a few chores for him and then, after the kid has cleaned out the garage, ironed the shirts, mowed the lawn and raked up the clippings, gives him the promised dollar. If your only recourse to get people to watch your shows is dishonesty, do you really have something worth promoting in the first place?

On the local level, where News rules, look for those rare appearances by your local Investigative Reporter. These people, often some of the smartest and most talented reporters in local news, are almost always trotted out only when there are Important Ratings to be sought. Look for tiny beads of perspiration to be forming on the upper lip of some phony-baloney type in your town as they are grilled over bookkeeping practices, health code violations, security breaches, etc., etc. in the weeks to come. And since your station's Investigative Unit can only turn out a few such stories a year, you can count on the rest of the News Department staff to be giving you lots of Important Stories. Most of the time, it seems, these are stories that You Need To Know In Order To Keep Your Children Healthy/Safe/Alive. Another favorite is the old Unclaimed Funds standby. "See if you can collect some of the millions of dollars in unclaimed funds in your state!" you'll be told. Ho-hum.

If the local News Departments really cared about us as much as they want us to believe they do in November, February and May, think how much more exquisitely wonderful all of our lives would be. Okay, you're right. It wouldn't make a damn bit of difference in most of our lives. Most of us have figured out by now that the only thing that our local stations and the networks truly care about is manipulating us into watching whatever it is that they are throwing at us. That the manipulation is done mainly by trickery only serves to make those of us with a cynical bent even more cynical.

This is why nearly all stations now use the services of consultants. Consultants use data based on viewer research to tell stations what they believe people want to see from their local stations. I promise you a scathing column sometime in the near future about consultants and how they've essentially ruined local broadcasting. The short synopsis, though, is that when you see that your local news has a new set, uses new fonts, gets a new graphic look, new music package, etc., etc., etc., it's nearly always because some consulting firm has told the station that this is what viewers want to see. Of course, they've done this in exchange for obscene amounts of money, as you might guess.

The bottom line here, of course, is this: Always be watchful of the tricks that are being played on you to turn you into a willing tv spectator against your will. And keep in mind that almost no one in the broadcasting business has your best interests at heart.

(C) 2002 - Karl Cable