Ah, sweeps week. Where would we get stunt programming and season-ender cliffhangers without it? This year, though, offers another twist, in that the top-shelf series are only now starting to crawl out of the ratings crater left by the WGA strike. Will viewers remain aloof, or go running back to their Desperate Housewives? And so we ask;

‘How will the delayed season affect May sweeps?’

May sweeps will be way less impactful this year for a couple of reasons. There appears to be less interest in the top shows coming off the long hiatus from the writers strike, and two of the top programs – Grey’s Anatomy and Lost – have their two-hour season finales scheduled after sweeps week.
Dennis Dinga,
VP, M2 Universal

I think the strike created unintended benefits for both broadcasters and producers by making broadcasters take some program risks to fill their schedules that they might not have otherwise taken. For Canadian producers – some here in Alberta – it caused programmers in the U.S. to look at a ‘Plan B’ because of the strike, and to their surprise, some ‘Plan B’ programs became ‘Plan A’ opportunities.
Joe Novak,
President and CEO, Joe Media TV

The hiatus….led to a softening of conventional audiences, which haven’t come back in full force since the strike ended. Just because studios produce new programs doesn’t mean audiences will watch. The ‘must see now’ factor of scripted programs has definitely been lacking. Sure, audiences will come back eventually, but they need something to come back to.
Conventional networks always tend to bring something desirable to the table every May sweeps, and I’m sure they will do so again this year. This May sweeps, networks will probably be pushing ‘A class’ guest appearances and cliff-hanger endings, which will suck audiences in for the short term.
However, I think the real issue that networks face and advertisers should be concerned with is not how many eyeballs they are drawing in this one-month period, but how they are maintaining audience stability throughout the year.
Doug Sinclair,
Broadcast supervisor, Genesis Vizeum

At MuchMusic and MTV we engage our viewers with premieres and finales year round, so we are generally unaffected by sweeps and broadcast tentpoles like the Olympics.
David Kines,
SVP of music and youth services, CTV