Every fall, the programming department of WBNS-10TV fields thousands of e-mails and calls about which NFL team will be selected on a week-by-week basis and why.
It's a task that is much more complicated than you might imagine, according to Frank Willson, the station's Director of Operations.
A top-rated regular season NFL game could reach almost 200,000 television households. To ensure that 10TV is selecting the game that the majority of viewers wish to see, the WBNS programming department monitors weekly NFL Nielsen ratings.
"The NFL season is released in the spring and, from that week until the Super Bowl, our NFL season begins," Willson said. "Immediately, we look to see which weeks we will have conflicts where the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals are playing at the same time."
For the 2011 season, there are seven weeks of conflict between the two teams.
"From there, we look at the Nielsen ratings that come in each morning to see which team is garnering the most viewers," Willson said "This is the only measurement we use because it's the most accurate method to measure the number of viewers."
NFL assignments are made 12 days in advance of the game. The CBS Television Network gives stations 24 hours to request a change in the assignment. CBS and the NFL then offer final approval of any changes and finalize the schedule.
Willson said that viewers ask for everything from Internet polls to picking teams based on their record, but he said the methods simply don't work.
"We avoid polling because message boards and e-mail chains can skew a poll towards one team or the other without being an accurate reflection of what game the entire market wishes to see," Willson said. "Picking the team with the best record doesn't always work because we have two Ohio teams with very passionate fan bases. Whether they're at the top of their division or the bottom, the central Ohio viewers still want to see them."
Willson said that there is also a significant fan base for the Pittsburgh Steelers and that the programming department tries to accommodate them when one of the Ohio teams is not an option.
The 10TV programming department announces each week's games Monday morning on 10TV.com. Viewers can click here to read weekly programming information.
Viewers wishing to contact the programming department can do so by e-mailing viewerservices@10tv.com.
