We are, at the time of this writing, in the midst of a sweeps period in television. Sweeps is to TV what summer releases are to big movie studios. Sweeps are a chance for riches. Sweeps are where the money is. Money is in ratings.

Here’s how it works: the more people you get to watch you, the greater your ratings are. The greater your ratings are, the more you can reasonably charge advertisers to ply their wares. Advertisers pay more, willingly, to stations with big ratings because, naturally, the more people they have watching their ads, the more people they have buying their junk.

Sweeps is a circus.

You can always tell when you’re in a sweeps period by watching your local news. They’ll do anything to get you to watch. They’ll give away free tickets to shows, DVD players, cars…anything you can think of. One station here in town is giving away a thousand dollars cash every night, with the added chance to win a million bucks.

The big dogs (CBS, NBC, Fox…) need to cough up more than DVD players to get good ratings. They need scandal. Murder. Criminal behavior. They need serious dirt to get you to tune in.

Is it any coincidence that CBS came out with photos of detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq right at the beginning of a sweeps period?

That being said, is there maybe any chance that CBS had these pictures long before sweeps started? That maybe this pressing news wasn’t really that pressing until money was at stake? Please. That’s obvious. Those pictures were solid gold. And us TV people aren’t really concerned with silliness like “immediate justice” (unless it means breaking news, in which case everyone else has the same info, it’s just a matter of getting on air with it before your competitors do).

CBS’s little gold mine has started off a whole other sweeps race, which is good for all of us in TV because it gives everyone a chance for more breaking news. You know what I’m talking about. George Bush’s little “save my bacon” dances. Donald Rumsfeld’s humiliating attempts at rescuing his own skin. John Kerry’s predicatable outrage.

Ratings.

Numbers.

It’s all marketing, and it’s all about wowing the rubes.

In my cynical mind, I wasn’t at all surprised that those two DJ’s from Portland tried to make a comedy bit out of Nicholas Berg’s videotaped decapitation. I was (and am) surprised that no one, under some pretentious moral banner of “justice” or “truth,” has decided to clean up the video and show it on air. I’m fairly confident that such a stunt was in the works, until Slim Jim and Peanut, whatever their names were, got fired from their radio station (probably, more accurately, until their producer got fired). Then a fear of going overboard settled in. Its one thing to set some vocal talent out to the sharks, but it’s another thing when it gets a producer pink-slipped. I would imagine the soldiers from Abu Ghraib and the Portland DJ’s have something in common. They got to do the crap work, they did it with smiles on their faces, and now they get screwed because their bosses didn’t want to take the fall. If that Portland radio station is anything like the TV station where I work, I know there’s a general manager there wiping his brow and saying “whew.” He gave some peons up and saved his job. Congratulations to him. Or her. Whatever.

Sweeps is about excitement. Titillation. Cheap thrills. It has little to do with news, and has everything to do with sewer silt disguised as news. It has to do with impressing the hell out of you, the viewer, so we, in turn, can impress the hell out of the advertisers. Like so much in the world today, it has only to do with money. Quality, integrity, and pride are words we use in the daily promos to get you to watch, but really, those are just words, and you know it. Like a john going to a hooker, you know exactly what’s going on. She doesn’t like you, and you really don’t like her, but a need gets filled. A tawdry need. A sleazy need. But a need nonetheless.

It doesn’t matter. Like they say, even in supermarkets nowadays: “it’s not personal, it’s just business.”

Either way, everyone still feels an urge to shower afterwards.