• by Wayne Friedman , March 3, 2006

Who won the February sweeps? It has been increasingly hard to tell because the final ratings don't tell the complete picture. Everyone has a case--ABC, Fox--even, perhaps, CBS.

On a pure--no excuses--level, the title goes to ABC with a 5.3 average rating among key adult 18-49 viewers. Fox came in second with a 5.1. NBC took the bronze, a third-place spot with 4.9. CBS was low man on the totem pole--a 3.5 rating effort.

But adding in the excuses, however, there's another story. ABC had the Super Bowl. NBC had the Olympics. Fox had "American Idol." CBS caved and went the repeat route.

Now with the Super Bowl regularly programmed in the February sweeps, and the Winter Olympics offering up still constant sweep rating blips every four years, February's special numbers increasingly only have value for specific constituencies.

"The people that are interested in the sweeps are the P.R. executives at the networks and their affiliates," said Shari Ann Brill, vice president and director of programming at Carat USA. "It doesn't affect national advertisers."

On the surface--given news headlines--the victory might have seemingly gone to Fox and "American Idol," which wiped the floor with the Olympics, on some nights tripling Olympics' ratings. ABC's top Sunday night programming did a similar job to NBC's special sport event. Overall, ABC numbers were up 29 percent.

The scary scenario is what NBC would have done without the Winter Olympics.

NBC was up 36 percent in February 2006 with 16 days of the Torino Olympics. "It didn't do terribly," said Brill. "It just had competition that it didn't face before."

Concerning national advertisers, NBC more or less delivered what was promised. Reports suggested that NBC guaranteed between a 12 and 14 household rating for the event. The Winter Olympics ended up with a 12.2 rating, which means NBC could have owed some time to advertisers.

For its entire Olympic advertising negotiations, NBC had been promising 90 percent of a specific rating level for the Torino Olympics--not the typical 100 percent given to advertisers for regularly scheduled prime-time shows, for example. Some early Olympic deals were inked at a 15 household rating--which equates to a 13.5 household number guarantee. That means NBC under-delivered to some advertisers by 10 percent.

Despite all of this, NBC said the Olympics gave them a $60 million to $70 million profit.

While Fox got major kudos and headlines for its drubbing of NBC's Olympics with "American Idol," the reality is that Fox was down 22 percent among adults 18-49 in the February sweeps. Of course, Fox's numbers were skewed as well, as it was competing against February 2005, when it had the big ratings from the Super Bowl.

CBS programmers obviously didn't want to get in the middle of this fight. So CBS ran repeats. The results weren't too bad--only off 8 percent to a 3.5 rating from a 3.8 the year before. From a financial scheduling position, this was a smart move. "A lot of CBS' repeats do better than the originals on other networks," said Brill. "CBS viewers are also more comparable to the Olympic viewers, in that they are little older."

And when April comes around, CBS might look a little fresher than the other networks. Says Brill: "They are going to air more original content when the other networks have to air repeats."