Thank God...

It's over. Another November sweeps has come and mercifully gone. A lot of the aggravation was washed away when our promotion manager treated us to a nice celebratory dinner at Ruth's Chris, however. I recommend the upside down chocolate souffle. I'd put up with twice as much sweeps irritation if I could have two of those at the end of it all.

So I'm wondering if any stations out there had some new, really ground breaking investigations or stories. Something we've not seen before. And if the news departments didn't deliver what about the promos? I saw our competition picking up their game a little bit. They had some really nice spots that made me stop and take notice. They also goosed my competitive nature a bit. Always a good thing.

Two of our biggest stories revolved around sports figures. We did a very interesting interview with Colts' punter Hunter Smith who chose our station to confess his battle with depression. The other was the big 3 interview I've mentioned in previous posts. The story did in fact pull in some big numbers and we held our quarter hour with both part one and part two. Tackling these interviews like they were stories instead of sports pieces made all the difference. My former news director who has moved out to California caught my spots for the Big 3 when our sports anchor sent them to him. He sent along a very nice note that just made my day. And I must confess that I've never done a spot that had more people talking. It was weird, and very gratifying, to get that much feedback.

We also did a story that's gotten us sued. Don't you just hate it when that happens? Our station, and our parent company, are standing by the story.

Our other big stories? You can never go wrong with stories about the state wasting your money. And property taxes have been a huge issue here in Indy. We did more on that. We also had a few stories about air travel - specifically people stealing from your luggage and air traffic safety. That was about it.

Anyone out there with some sweeps stories to share? That includes stories that didn't work. That info is gold.

On to year ender promos and the next big image campaign for the AFC Championship game...