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That special time of year Swept AwayBy Rick Horowitz
Say you're a woman. (It's been known to happen.) Say you're an attractive woman of a certain physical type -- rosy cheeks, flaxen hair. You can be attractively perky, or attractively proper; it doesn't matter. You can be extremely young, or even...slightly older than that. It doesn't matter -- as long as you have the rosy cheeks and the flaxen hair. That's the first requirement. Now, say life has thrown you a few curve balls. You've been captured by Iraqis, say, or kidnapped by crazies. Or a mean old prosecutor has decided that you played a little fast and loose down on Wall Street. Hardships every one, and wasn't your very existence turned completely upside down? Of course it was. That's the second requirement. (If you learned important lessons from your ordeal, that's good, too. That's gravy.) Now, say you've decided you can't keep your story bottled up inside you any longer. So you send out word to the appropriate organizations: I've got a tale to tell, and I'm willing to tell it. I need to spill my guts to the American people -- preferably in prime time. But say, what with one thing and another, that by the time you send out word to the appropriate organizations, it's a few days after Thanksgiving. And so word comes back, cold and cruel: "You're out of luck, Bunki -- you missed November." See, you blew the third requirement. For every thing (squirm, squirm, squirm), there is a season. And the season for this kind of thing -- the heart-rending celebrity crisis, the soul-stirring celebrity solution -- is November. November "sweeps," to be specific. Call it "When Bad Things Happen to Blonde People." Or at least "When Blonde People Talk About the Bad Things That Happen to Them." Has there ever been a lineup quite like this one? Over here, we've got Elizabeth Smart and her camera-ready family, and her made-for-TV movie, and her... Over here, we've got Jessica Lynch and her camera-ready rescue, and her made-for-TV movie, and her... Over here, meanwhile, we've got Martha Stewart, who once preferred hacking away at salad to answering questions about scandal. Martha Stewart and her camera-ready everything, including a new and strangely appealing vulnerability. (Our Martha? Scared of prison?) And just for light relief, here comes Britney-Spears-as-you've-never-seen-her, with the inside story of that Madonna kiss and other saucy bits. Britney Spears and her camera-ready body and her camera-ready outfits and, by the way, a brand-new CD about to hit the stores. What a lineup! All that glamour. All that hair. It's enough to make a man reach for his sunglasses. But wait -- there's more! The Elizabeths and Jessicas and Marthas and Britneys of the world aren't telling their tales to just anyone. Not a chance! These days are made for the Katies and the Barbaras and the Dianes of the world -- the sympathetic ear, the misty eye, the smiles, the frowns, the ups, the downs -- Where were we? Yes, November, when the networks hold nothing back. What sweeps month does, after all, is set the rates the TV networks can charge their advertisers. The more people who tune in to this or that program during "sweeps," the more money it'll cost an advertiser to plug a product on that program during other parts of the year. So the networks try anything they can to push their ratings higher, and higher still. November is the Wonderbra of TV programming. So you may be wondering: Does it make any sense to base the ad rate for a normal week in January on numbers from a totally abnormal week in November? Of course not. But November isn't about sense. November is about dollars. Bring on the blondes. Posted 11/11/03.
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Rick Horowitz
