The ethical dilemma presented by the ratings sweeps is a fundamental operating principle of advertiser-financed television broadcasting: broadcasters generate operating revenue and profit by exchanging audiences for money with advertisers. In order to create or attract audiences to be sold, the broadcaster formulates or acquires and then circulates cultural images in the form of programs and commercial advertisements as a "consciousness industry." By examining the ethical dimensions of the marketplace practices motivated by audience measurement, it should be possible to interrogate the fundamental assumptions of culture production situated in the political, social, and economic environment created by monopoly capitalism. For the television industry, quantitative audience measurement is the primary mechanism of audience commodification and the ratings sweeps are acts of containment on the part of the broadcasters. The immense up-front cost of television programs capable of generating larger-than-average audiences will continue to inhibit year-round production, and advertising revenue will continue to coalesce at certain times of the year. As long as advertisers accept the broadcasters' claims of viewer cooperation, the ethical dilemmas of television economics will remain. With, or without, formal ratings sweeps, advertiser financed television broadcasters will continue to profit from this absurdity that substitutes the financial exigencies of private capital for the cultural potential of television as social communication. (Thirty-eight references are attached.) (RAE)