ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, May 3, 1996 TAG: 9605030034
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
If you've never thought about how important ratings are to a local television station, consider this:
WSLS-TV (Channel 10) is prepared to give away $250,000 this month to attract viewers to its 6 p.m. newscast.
Each weekday one viewer has a chance to win $10,000 by calling the station within 10 minutes of seeing a "lucky number" during the broadcast. The numbers are available in a special promotional magazine the station produced and mailed to 400,000 households in its primary market area.
It's a lot of money to bet on a promotion. Enough to buy a full season's worth of the most expensive syndicated programming.
But WSLS General Manager Randy Smith is counting on viewers who switch to Channel 10 for the contest to stay with the station well past the end of May.
"We're asking people to sample us for 30 days. They'll see that we have the best news in the state of Virginia and will stay with us for the long term," Smith figures.
While the station wants viewers all year round, it is no accident that it is spending a quarter of a million dollars this month.
May is "sweeps month" - one of four times each year that Nielsen Media Research asks a sampling of viewers in the market to keep diary records of their TV viewing for a month.
The current ratings period began April 25 and concludes May 22.
The stakes can be high. Advertising rates are set according to ratings strength. Sometimes the agencies who buy ad time look only at the numbers for a specific demographic group when deciding where to showcase their products. Women ages 25 to 54, for instance, is a group many advertisers want to reach.
Naturally, advertisers want to buy time in the programs that reach the largest audience of potential consumers - provided the advertiser can afford that.
In this market, WDBJ-TV (Channel 7) has been the top-rated station overall for years. In large part, that has been a result of parlaying a strong local news product into viewer loyalty that carries over into the prime-time evening hours. That is true even in years - such as the current one - when its network has a weak schedule.
But there is room in most markets - including this one - for several stations, including those that can offer ad time at a significant discount from the price commanded by the top-rated station in any particular time period.
Still, everybody wants the best numbers and every station does what it can to help ensure that "the book" - Neilsen's "Station Index" profiling viewers in the region - shows its strengths.
At the network level, that often translates into high-profile special programs or blockbuster season finales for highly rated shows during "sweeps" periods.
In the local market, the tactics for raising the numbers is usually a bit less obvious to viewers than WSLS' monetary giveaway.
WJPR/WFXR-TV (Channels 21 and 27), for instance, runs frequent call-letter reminders to viewers "in case you need to write it down."
A common practice here, as in many other markets, is for stations to pay Nielsen to place "extra diaries" in geographic areas where they believe they are likely to have a stronger showing than their competitors.
Technically, the extra diaries are needed to get a large enough statistical sample for reliable breakdowns of data for small geographic segments - such as single counties. The numbers are included in the overall figures for the market as well.
It's a practice Nielsen - the only national television ratings service - insists doesn't skew the statistical reliability of the overall results, since it "weights" the impact of diaries according to a complex set of factors.
Some station managers disagree, pointing to the fact that the only reason stations buy extra diaries is to attempt to raise their numbers.
In the last ratings period - conducted during the month of February - WJPR/WFXR, a UHF station whose signal range can't compete with the VHF signals of WDBJ, WSLS or WSET, paid Nielsen to distribute 62 extra diaries in Roanoke, Botetourt and Montgomery counties.
WSET paid Nielsen to distribute 200 additional diaries in several counties in the eastern end of the "designated market area" near its home base in Lynchburg.
The extra diaries constituted a third of the total sample. And WSET's 6 p.m. newscast moved past WSLS to No. 2 in the market.
"It was something we had to do," said Jerry Heilman, former general manager of WSET, who left the station last week to oversee the development of two Alabama TV stations.
Nielsen, he said, "has been oversampling the Western portion [of the market] for a number of years. That forced us to spend tens of thousands of dollars to get extra books on the eastern side of mountain - to get a level playing field. When the diaries are distributed evenly, we always come up in the books."
The question of what is an even distribution is a matter of opinion.
Robert G. Lee, president and general manager of WDBJ, earlier this year wrote Nielsen complaining of what he called "ratings tampering" - the practice of "letting us or any other television station stack the deck by skewing the sample toward a geography which favors us."
Acknowledging that WDBJ also has engaged in the practice in the past, Lee contended it "is not in the interest of advertisers, [advertising] agencies or stations."
WSLS' Smith also raised concerns about the reliability of the data.
"This is not to knock the competition, because I think all ... the stations operate professionally, but it is no secret that WSET's ratings strength" is where it had additional diaries placed, Smith said.
"Nielsen denies there is any influence, but there were no other changes and [WSET] made a tremendous jump from the previous rating books."
While acknowledging that a lot of factors come into play, Smith said, "where I've seen diaries purchased, nine times out of 10 the station ends up with improvements."
The information the diaries produce for small geographic areas are used to advantage as well.
"We know where our strengths are," Heilman said, and having separate figures for those areas "helps our sales efforts considerably."
While Nielsen has said it is committed to increasing its statistical sample by 50 percent to enhance its reliability, some station executives are still skeptical of its methods, opening the company to sharp criticism around the country - including threats by some broadcasters to support the creation of a competitor.
LENGTH: Long : 117 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Chart: Comparing ratings and market share of broadcastby CNBstations. color. Map. color.