The Good, the Bad, and the Nielsens

In some utopian future, television will spread bright, splashy programming throughout the year, forgoing reruns and letting viewers pick what they want to watch without ever facing a tough choice between competing shows.

Until then, there are sweeps.

Designed to benefit local TV stations, which use results from the months of November, February and May to negotiate advertising rates, sweeps has turned into a periodic slugfest of miniseries, specials, movies and stunts, all scheduled with the hope of temporarily boosting ratings.

Even many network officials agree the four-week surveys no longer make much sense, especially since the networks beat each other’s brains in with original programming during those months, then often resort to reruns in December, March and April to ensure they have enough fresh episodes to extend through May.

“From a network viewpoint sweeps are the worst thing possible,” Fox Chairman David Hill told a group of reporters last month. “They’re an anachronism.”

“It is hurting us all,” added CBS Television President Leslie Moonves, who has cited eliminating sweeps as one of his goals.

Unfortunately, Nielsen Media Research has no other means at this point of gauging performance in the United States’ more than 200 TV markets, meaning sweeps will continue in some form through the foreseeable future.

“Until we can come up with an accurate way to measure demographics in those local markets, we will have sweeps periods. It’s just a function of technology,” said NBC Entertainment President Scott Sassa.

Having seen their audience gradually dwindle as cable and other options nibble away at them, “big event” programming has become the focal point of network plans to woo back fickle audiences. The current sweeps will thus feature five miniseries, including ABC’s “Netforce,” which concluded as the survey period began Thursday.

The first sweeps of 1999 will rehash “The ‘60s,” weather the three-part Stephen King epic “The Storm of the Century” and bring Lauren Bacall to the small screen in “Too Rich: The Secret Life of Doris Duke,” playing opposite onetime miniseries king Richard Chamberlain. “Storm of the Century,” the first King miniseries written directly for television, will face another miniseries, NBC’s “To Serve and Protect,” starring Craig T. Nelson in a saga about three generations of police officers.

King miniseries have proved a sure-fire ratings draw in the past, though results were less awe-inspiring for the author’s made-for-TV telling of “The Shining” in 1997. In addition, because of ABC’s Thursday ratings quagmire, “Storm” will take an awkward leap from Monday to Thursday for its concluding chapter, so as not to disrupt the network’s popular Tuesday and Wednesday comedy blocks.

NBC set the tone for event miniseries by virtue of its past success with “Gulliver’s Travels,” “The Odyssey” and “Merlin”--all ratings winners from producer Robert Halmi Sr., who’s back at it in May with “Noah’s Ark” for NBC and ABC’s $30 million-plus “Cleopatra.” Halmi’s lavish offering this month is a three-hour, star-studded version of “Alice in Wonderland,” which NBC will air Feb. 28.

ABC Entertainment President Jamie Tarses has called such big events “still one of the things that, as a broadcast network, you sort of have the exclusive rights to.”

Not that everything has to be so grandiose. CBS has regularly done extremely well with “Hallmark Hall of Fame” productions and has another--”Night Ride Home,” starring Rebecca De Mornay--to counter “The ‘60s.” ABC, meanwhile, gets into a biographical groove on Feb. 22 with “And the Beat Goes On: The Sonny & Cher Story.”

NBC will preempt its struggling Monday night comedies to air the conclusions of “The ‘60s” and “To Serve and Protect,” bumping regular Wednesday fare with the specials “Confirmation: The Hard Evidence of Aliens Among Us?” and “Dave Barlia: Extreme Stuntman.”

Unlike May, which is followed by months of reruns, preempting regular programming in February carries some risk. Networks can confuse and alienate viewers when programs disappear during sweeps, especially if they are just finding a series like “Lateline,” which NBC will take off the air until March.

Ongoing series do engage in their own form of stunting during sweeps, usually involving guest casting. Woody Harrelson, for example, takes a break from movies to appear as his “Cheers” character on NBC’s “Frasier,” while Brooke Shields reunites with “Blue Lagoon” co-star Christopher Atkins for the first time in nearly two decades on “Suddenly Susan.”

In a similar stunt, Christopher Lloyd joins fellow “Back to the Future” traveler Michael J. Fox on “Spin City.” There’s also an “Odd Couple” reunion in an unlikely locale, with Tony Randall and Jack Klugman appearing (not as Felix and Oscar) on “Brother’s Keeper,” a first-year ABC comedy about mismatched roommates.

“The X-Files” even promises to bring its alien conspiracy plot “to a surprising end” in a two-part story that begins Sunday and concludes Feb. 14, although based on the program’s history these episodes will doubtless raise as many questions as they answer.

The WB network has few stunts along those lines in its bag of tricks, beyond the birth of twins on its family drama “7th Heaven.” The other fledgling network, UPN, will offer a two-hour “Star Trek: Voyager” that features the first TV appearance by the Borg queen--a character introduced in the movie “Star Trek: First Contact”--while its sitcom “Moesha” will air a black-and-white “I Love Lucy” spoof.

Theatrical films haven’t performed as well as the networks would like in recent months, but nevertheless remain a sweeps staple in terms of propping up nights where series are struggling. The Arnold Schwarzenegger film “Eraser” and “Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls” are part of NBC’s arsenal, while Fox--home to the new Eddie Murphy clay-animated comedy “The PJs”--will air the premiere of Murphy’s “The Nutty Professor” Feb. 24 and the thriller “Seven” two days later.

ABC’s movie-heavy lineup includes “Courage Under Fire,” “Waiting to Exhale,” “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” “Tin Cup” and the comedy “Happy Gilmore,” suddenly a hot property in the wake of Adam Sandler’s theatrical smash “The Waterboy.” “The Wonderful World of Disney” will showcase the by-now obligatory premiere of a Disney hit, “The Little Mermaid,” and repeat the Brandy-Whitney Houston musical “Cinderella” on Valentine’s Day leading into “Storm of the Century.”

While the NBA All-Star Game has been eliminated by the league’s labor strife, sweeps will showcase football’s last gasp, the Pro Bowl game, Sunday on ABC. Other annual events include CBS’ Grammy Awards telecast and NBC’s made-for-TV Soap Opera Digest Awards.

Never to be outdone in the specials category, Fox will again cater to viewers who crane their necks at traffic accidents, with titles like “The World’s Most Shocking Moments #2: Caught on Tape” and “Surviving the Moment of Impact #3” (yes, there was a No. 1 and 2) to run Thursdays through the month.

In addition to the ever-reliable “shocking,” Fox is banking on another word--”Live!”--to turbo-charge ratings. “Guinness World Records: Primetime” will feature a live stunt on Feb. 23, followed a week later by “Opening the Lost Tombs: Live From Egypt,” billed as “the first-ever live broadcast of an archeological excavation on the Giza Plateau.”

Asked by TV critics how the live element would add suspense to the latter, producer Nancy Stern explained, “We want to find a mummy.”

Of course, Geraldo Rivera found nothing when he opened Al Capone’s vault on live television in 1986, but the telecast still generated huge ratings. Fox is no doubt wagering that few of its viewers can remember that far back, even if some of their mummies do.

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We Heard You,

Two weeks ago TV Times changed the type size in the nightly grids in order to list more channels. But a number of readers told us the type was too hard to read. So this week we have gone back to a bigger type in the grids, but still keeping the extra listings.