What Sweeps Are

Maybe you hear about it or maybe you don’t. Most fans of TV shows know that there are some times of the year when shows are more in danger of being pulled from the schedule than they might otherwise be. That means that sweeps are happening.

What are sweeps? Basically, there is a period of time when networks will pull out all the stops to make sure that they are airing the best programs around. The most well known month of sweeps is November and that is why shows tended to be pulled from the schedule around that time. It’s not as common to do that anymore due to networks not having as much courage as they used to.

Still, sweeps are very important in terms of the TV world. You will see shows still today randomly get pulled from the schedule around sweeps months when they might have seemed okay before. We saw that with The Millers then later The McCarthys. May is the most dangerous time with some shows as it is nearing the end and it may be gone forever before then like Powerless. Other times, they will air the rest of the season before May sweeps start and have something new or reliable repeats instead.

If ratings are always important, you might wonder why sweeps offer more power to the time in general. Well, sweeps are basically more important than just the regular season is. It seems odd that they would do such a thing, but they do. They always will do sweeps and will keep doing it forever. I doubt that it will ever go away. And despite this short, quickly written post, I hope that you can understand it now too. I’ll see you next week.