Get Ready for Network TV November Sweeps

In the oncoming weeks, a competition, the likes of which the public has never seen, will occur-it is a contest that will demonstrate agility, skill and strength. By November, losers will fall to the wayside, and a winner will be crowned. Forget baseball's World Series; I'm talking about the fall television sweeps.

Several times each year (November, February, May and July) the Nielsen Station Index (NSI) collects demographic viewing data from sample homes in different viewing markets. (The NSI measures what people watch and when.) Each household member writes down what he or she or their guests watch during the given period of time. The term "sweeps" refers to the order in which the diaries are mailed out to homes; the diaries from the northeast are commonly processed first and then are "swept" around the country to the south, midwest and west, relatively.

During sweeps, networks get a feel for what viewers are watching and what they're not. They may either cancel a series or put them on hiatus, or they can call for more episodes of a show or renew a whole season. Commonly, networks have mid-season debuts that they have "saved" to put in place of any shows that they remove from their programming schedules. Sweeps are usually a good time for cliffhanger or dramatic episodes of popular shows, as they're a great way to attract viewers. A good showing in a sweeps can do wonders for a network, but a bad showing can ruin an entire season of programming.

Although November sweeps are big business in television, they don't hold the impact that May sweeps do. May sweeps are the final chance for many series: It can mean death or a full-length contract. The idea of November sweeps is not exactly to gain more viewers, but more importantly, to keep them. Sweeps are also a primetime for the networks to show new miniseries and specials.

This November viewers have the chance to view three straight weeks of disaster programming. Airing over two Sundays, on Nov. 6 and 13, CBS will show the miniseries Category 7: End of the World. The four-hour program is a sequel to last year's Category 6: Day of Destruction.

Not to be outdone, NBC will air its remake of the Poseidon Adventure, starring Alec Baldwin. Because, one would guess, of the number of disaster-related events coming to the big networks, NBC is holding back on its other miniseries, 10.5: Apocalypse, the sequel to its 2004 killer-earthquake production.

Competitive disaster miniseries aside, the networks do not have a great deal of long-running shows to hold onto viewers with. There is no Ross-and-Rachel conflict right now, no Dawson-loves-Joey to tune into every week. Few guarantees (short of Desperate Housewives and The Amazing Race) exist in television these days. And the networks seem to be echoing this, taking nothing for granted.

Some networks are reluctant to pick successful series up for a full season, such as ABC's Commander in Chief. Reason being that Commander in Chief is not a Desperate Housewives-caliber freshman hit, and ABC wants to wait it out a little bit before committing. NBC also seems reluctant to renew; only trailer-park sitcom My Name Is Earl and alien-invasion drama Surface have been given full-season deals.

But no shows have been axed by the peacock network as of yet. The renewal-happy networks this year are CBS and FOX. FOX has picked up crime drama Bones and family comedy The War at Home, while CBS has decided to keep successful sitcom How I Met Your Mother as well as dramas Criminal Minds and Ghost Whisperer.

The reluctance to order new episodes may have come from the slew of cheap and easy-to-produce reality shows like Fear Factor and Survivor. The standards of entertainment have certainly changed-Americans today are harder to captivate with the everyday medical drama or family sitcom. With few shining stars in their lineups, networks are going to have to try much harder to attract (and keep) viewers, especially in the crucial 18-49 age demographic. No matter what the case, they have their work for the fall season cut out for them.