T He Infotainment of Politics

The Infotainment of Politics

KEES BRANTS PETER NEIJENS University of Amsterdam

In the 1994 election, political parties and politicians in the Netherlands were, for the first time, confronted with a dual broadcasting system. New commercial stations joined the broadcasting landscape alongside the public broadcasting channels, which by law and tradition had very much functioned as a balanced platform for political communication. As a consequence of competition, one could expect politicians to focus their media campaigning more on newly available “infotainment”-typ e programs, changing the conduct of politics. Nonethe- less, a 6-week, around-the-clock content analysis of three public and two private channels showed that more than three quarters of politicians’ televisio n appearances were on the traditional informative programs. This article intro- duces criteria for an “infotainment scale” a nd a method for analyzing the degree of entertaining elements in different program genres, based on content, format, and style. It is concluded that all of the informational programs examined contained some elements of entertainment.

Keywords infotainment scale, Netherlands television, television content analysis, election campaign tactics, audience fragmentation

Bill Clinton’s 1992 performance on the Arsenio Hall show, playing Elvis Presley’s hit “Heartbreak Hotel” on his saxophone, is a typical example of the phenomenon called “infotainment.” T alk shows such as Larry King Live, variety shows like Nash- ville Now, and in general, television programs in which elements of information and entertainment are mixed are expected to appeal to the politically less interested viewer, the “zappers” i n the audience. There was a time when politics was a topic only for serious informative genres such as news, current affairs, and other informative programs. But in modern day television and political campaigning, politicians no longer shun entertainment programs. Indeed, they positively court them, while at the same time informative TV programs increasingly rely on entertainment elements to attract a large(r) audience (Brokaw et al., 1997). Such a development, in the words of Blumler and Gurevitch (1995, p. 203), constitutes a “crisis of communication for citizenship . . . an impoverishing way of addressing citizens about political issues.” As such, it collides with the ideal of democracy and the ideas of democratic theory: collective decision making through deliberative communication, namely, “through discussion and debate among mem- bers of the citizenry under conditions of openness, fairness, mutual respect, and concern for the common welfare” (Price, 1993, p. 3). A prerequisite for a well- functioning democracy in this theory is an actively and rationally participating citizenry that has access to and is fed by relevant information and knows something about the actual issues on the political agenda. The concern about infotainment is that it will mean a decline in political discourse on TV. Is this development observable only in the United States, with its presidential

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Political Communication , 15:149–164, 1998 Copyright ã 1998 Taylor & Francis 1058-4609/98 $12.00 + .00 150 Kees Brants and Peter Neijens political system and competitive commercial broadcasting, or are there similar developments in European countries in which private broadcasting channels increasingly abound? In this article, we consider political communication during the 1994 elections in the Netherlands as a basis for addressing this question. 1 On one hand, the country is a prime example of consensual, parliamentary democracy, with a traditionally strong public broadcasting system; on the other hand, it shows all of the signs of change that we see in most West European countries.

System Changes Since the mid- to late 1980s, there have been several developments that would lead one to expect a greater focus on images and entertainment in the communication strategies of the political parties. Some of these developments are typically Dutch, but most are general to Europe. First, on the sociopolitical level we see what, with some exaggeration, has been labeled a “crisis” i n democracy. It involves the diminishing importance of political ideologies as the social “cement” o f society and, thus, less extreme policy positions and fewer differences between the political parties’ programs (Pennings, 1995). There also is declining voter turnout, coupled with increasing political cynicism toward politicians, parties, and politics (Scholten, 1996) and declining party loyalty yet increasing membership in single-issue groups (Duyvendak et al., 1992). Second, the Dutch broadcasting situation is in a state of flux, as are most West European systems. The introduction of commercial television in the Netherlands at the end of 1989 (first RTL4, and then RTL5 in 1993), alongside the three public channels, not only meant an increase in the number of entertainment programs but also a loss of viewers for the traditional public channels. This has had three consequences. One is a more fragmented audience, with viewers “zapping” and “grazing” over more than 20 channels, of which about half are in the Dutch lan- guage. Second, there is a decline in audience share for individual news and current affairs programs. These “free” programs have been—and continue to be—far more important than “paid” publicity opportunities in the Dutch political campaign culture. Third, there is a blurring of traditionally separate TV genres with a growing number of talk and variety shows dealing with political topics. In short, there has been a shift from programs in the public interest to programs the public is interested in. In combination with these sociopolitical developments, political parties envis- age an electorate zapping away from TV programs with heavy political content, forcing the parties to try to win voters in a “nonpolitical way” i n “nonpolitical” program genres. Since the 1960s, when the stable, “pillarized” structure of Dutch society had come to an end and the floating voter to the fore, politicians had occasionally (and often unfortunately) appeared on entertainment programs. On one hand, they knew that the new floating voter could well be found among the viewers of these programs; on the other hand, however, politics remained serious business, and the emphasis in the electoral strategy was still on persuasion through information. Complementing the human interest aspects of television, political parties for some time now have been concentrating on communicating the personal qualities of candidates, ranging from “knowledgeable” and “born leader” to “family man” a nd “likable.” Finally, on the eve of the Dutch 1994 general election, the four main parties The Infotainment of Politics 151 all had their own specific problems. The Christian Democratic party (CDA) had a new leader (El co Brinkman) who, in order to both mirror and distance himself from his popular predecessor (Ruud Lubbers), had opted for an American-style image- oriented and human interest campaign. His competitor from the Labor party (PvdA), Wim Kok, had his own image problem: Opinion polls showed that both he and his party were seen as unreliable, uncaring, and lacking in social feeling. The polls also predicted a disastrous election result for his party. The two smaller parties had image problems as well. The free-market Liberal party (VVD) leader, Frits Bolkestein, the leading conservative voice in the country, was considered a poor, much too highbrow communicator, and the party therefore opted for a campaign team in which prominence was given to a former sportswoman (Er ica Terpstra) who was known to be especially popular with the older generation. The socially progressive Liberal party (D66) leader, Hans van Mierlo, was both a great communicator and popular with large segments of the public. D66 was reluctant to go all out in the campaign, because the polls already promised success. The problem was that the electorate identified D66 politics only with its leader. In marketing terms, the “brand” was well known, but not the “product.” These macro-level developments and micro-level problems led us to ask whether politicians geared their television appearances in the 1994 elections to a large degree to so-called infotainment and entertainment programs, and whether informational programs presented politics in a light, human interest style. Besides exploring these descriptive research questions, we also investigated a more theoretical issue: namely, whether the content attributes of infotainment correspond to the genres that are usually regarded as purveyors of information. If not, how might we rethink our definition of what constitutes infotainment? Because the latter questions are very much geared to the descriptive ones, they need to be addressed first. At the same time, answers to the initial questions may affect the validity of the analytical attributes. Infotainment is a sensitizing concept. In this explorative research, we wanted to identify the importance of infotainment in the 1994 election as a basis for establishing longitudinal indicators to analyze future trends.

Data and Methods: Criteria for Developing an Infotainment Scale

We drew on both quantitative and qualitative content analysis for measuring infotainment. For the quantitative analysis, we examined the total (morning, day, and evening) broadcasting time of the three public channels, Netherlands 1, 2, and 3, and the two new Dutch private channels, RTL4 and RTL5, over a period of 6 weeks prior to the election. Each appearance of a politician on television was coded as to whether she or he spoke or not and whether she or he was the only politician on the screen. For each appearance, the channel, the time of the broadcast, and the duration were coded, as well as the name and political party of the politician. In total, approximately 12,000 cases were coded. By linking these data to those of the people meter on TV viewing behavior of a representative sample of the Dutch population (collected by the market research company Intomart), we were able to calculate how many and which persons were watching the politicians and for how long. We could thus see in which program genres politicians appeared, how parties differed, and whether they actually reached the audience they wanted. The 152 Kees Brants and Peter Neijens people meter data are gathered by Dutch Continuous Television Research, commis- sioned by the public and commercial broadcasters. The audience panel consists of a national sample of 1,000 households (approximately 2,400 persons 6 years old and older). Once a year, the panel fills out a survey with questions about viewers’ age, political interest, and so on. For the qualitative component, we took as our starting point the fact that a whole range of subgenres has developed between informative and entertainment programs in which aspects of human interest, information, and entertainment have been mixed (Just et al., 1996). Dahlgren (1995, p. 54) discusses various genres or formats whereby the “manner in which material is defined, shaped, structured and presented” constitutes a “mediating link joining technology, subject matter, eco- nomics and entertainment.” He mentions as entertainment characteristics both content and format elements: sensationalism, personalization, heightened dramatic conflict, quicker tempo, and fewer abstractions. Talk shows such as Oprah Winfrey, Larry King Live, Donahue, and their Dutch equivalents are the most prominent and most researched but certainly not the only examples. In these shows, elements of the private sphere, such as intimacy, spontaneity, and personal feeling, are intro- duced in the political discourse of the public sphere (Munson, 1993). In measuring infotainment in television news, Doris Graber (1994), expanding on Nimmo and Combs (1985; see also Bennett, 1988), distinguishes journalistic framing approaches such as the factual/feature style (Do news stories answer the traditional journalistic questions of who, what, where, when, why, and how?), dramatic elements in the story (such as conflictive elements and human interactions), and elements with which viewers can identify (arousal of empathy and personal identification, emotional scenes). For the public, much understanding comes from narratives centered around individual characters. Personalization can be an important strategy for clarifying political information by placing social issues in a personal perspective (Crigler & Jensen, 1991). In covering the entire range of television genres in their signifying process and locating differences and similarities, we combined several of these journalistic elements and characteristics. But we also tried to distinguish between topic and setting and between content and form. In our qualitative analysis of the ways in which different genres approached politics and politicians, we viewed the information- entertainment dichotomy as a continuum, a scale with two poles. On one end are programs with hard and serious news, often about politics, and a factual/feature style; on the other end are programs in which the emphasis is on taste, pleasure, lifestyle, and gossip (Dahlgren, 1993). Infotainment is situated between the two poles and incorporates political-informative elements in entertainment programs and entertainment aspects in traditionally informative programs. It is the domain of “soft news” w herein the factual meets the emotional and is “sauced” with dramatic elements of conflict, scandal, and gossip. In order to classify programs on this continuum, we distinguished three criteria: topic, style, and format characteristics. On the topic side of the continuum, one could expect more direct and factual content aspects. Examples are stories about the fundamentals (ideology and electoral program) of the competing parties in an election and stories about policy, political issues, and party political disagreements. Politicians would be discussed with respect to their expertise or political involve- ment, as policymakers or experts. In general, the style would be serious, from a certain professional distance, and meant to inform with a tone of objectivity. In The Infotainment of Politics 153 interviews, the politician is confronted with differences of opinion (Just et al., 1996). The format is businesslike without “fringes” suc h as (active) audiences and accompanying music. Nothing should distract from what the program is about: information and confrontation. On the entertainment side of the continuum, we would expect topics with a more human interest content in which politicians appear as individuals with specific characteristic traits. Image and drama are more important than the message, and the latter is preferably simple and lighthearted or intimate and laden with emotions. The style is more informal, personal, and open, meant to entertain and present a picture of the politician as a human being. The presenter (interviewer, host), who is often a star or personality, can also speak more on behalf of the public rather than as independent “watchdog.” Oprah Winfrey and Ricki Lake, for example, often interview from an audience perspective. The format is entertaining: Relaxation and tension are built in via conversation and debate, which can be either light or sensational and dramatic. There are often participating audiences, along with accompanying music and entertainers. The different criteria of the information-entertainment continuum are summa- rized in Table 1, which displays ideal types of informative and entertainment programs. It is obvious that these are the opposite ends of the continuum and that, in reality, many combinations form the heart of infotainment.

T able 1 Criteria for an infotainment scale

Program type

Informative Entertainment

T opic Information on party funda-“Human interest,” p ersonal characteristics mentals, policy positions, characteristics of politicians issues, party political (characters of politicians, disagreements, political image, etc.), politicians qualities of politicians pictured as human beings

Style Presenter/interviewer is a Presenter/interviewer also a characteristics professional, not a per- personality; style is light- sonality; style is serious, hearted/informal, meant to meant to inform; approachentertain; approach is is detached; confronting empathetic; open instead instead of open; objective,of confronting without value judgments

F ormat Little conversation, business- More conversation and characteristics like setting, no music and debate, amusement qua other sandwich elements, setting (scenery), with no participating audience music and other sandwich elements, participating public 154 Kees Brants and Peter Neijens

Findings Politicians in the Picture In the 1994 election campaign, politicians filled the screen during the 6 weeks prior to election day for more than 67 hours (i.e., 2.5% of the total broadcasting time). This is quite substantial, especially when one considers that, during the same period, television spent only 20 hours on soccer, the most popular sport in the Netherlands. The average voter, who spends just over 2 hours per day in front of the television set, watched politicians for 2 hours and 42 minutes over those 6 weeks. To get some idea of the extent to which politicians geared their television appearances on info/entertainment programs relative to traditional informative programs, the amount of attention to politicians on television was broken down according to program genres. The following genres were distinguished: news, (heavy) information (e.g., documentaries and discussion programs), current affairs, party political broadcasts, talk shows (light interview programs), variety shows (usually in the morning, with emphasis on light topics), and entertainment (game shows, soaps, music programs) (Fi gure 1). This classification was based on the standard division used by the Dutch broadcasting corporations for analyzing the people meter data- base of viewers. We assumed that these genres corresponded with the continuum in Table 1, varying from “very informative” to “very entertaining.” The extent to which this assumption was valid is investigated subsequently. Figure 1 shows that, contrary to our expectations, the traditional informative programs accounted for an overwhelming majority of the attention given to politicians; three fourths of politicians’ airtime was in the news, (heavy) information program, current affairs, and party political broadcast categories. With the exception of the last category, the viewers were also interested in these programs; politicians in current affairs and the news attracted a relatively large audience.

Visibility Adjuste d visibility

Figure 1. Visibility of politicians in various program genres, and visibility adjusted for audience size. The black bars sum to 100% and indicate the attention given to politicians in these various program genres, based on content analysis of the programs. The gray bars also sum to 100% and are a function of the attention given to politicians in the program adjusted for the size of the audience for the program. The Infotainment of Politics 155

Talk and variety shows and entertainment programs paid attention to politicians as well; these programs accounted for 22 percent of the broadcasting time devoted to politicians, with talk shows accounting for 15 percent. Variety shows were responsible for 1.6 percent of the broadcasting exposure of politicians. Because these shows are daytime programs, they had relatively few viewers: 0.4 percent of the audience’s viewing time of politicians. Politicians also appeared in entertainment programs (a share of 6 percent of the broadcasting time of politicians). Because of their popularity, they were accountable for 10 percent of the audience’s viewing time of politicians. In sum, not only did politicians limit their focus on infotainment genres; when they did appear on such programs, they did not reach a larger audience than that available in traditional informational programs. Another question is whether politicians reach different segments of viewers/ voters by appearing in various infotainment program categories. Table 2 shows that viewers with low political interest watched politicians less (on average, 103 minutes in these 6 weeks) than those with moderate political interest (177 minutes) or high interest in politics (245 minutes). The difference between these groups was most striking in (heavy) information and current affairs programs, which were mainly watched by people with moderate or high political interest. The differences between the various groups were minimal in the entertainment category. Note that the traditional informative programs were the main window for seeing politicians at election time even for the politically less interested.

Differences Between Political Parties

Christian Democrats (CDA) and Labor (PvdA) received most of the television exposure (31 percent and 28 percent, respectively). Their liberal colleagues of the free-market VVD and progressive D66 each filled the screen 14 percent of the time. The other (more than 10) parties together totaled 12.5 percent. The differences among the three largest parties (CDA, PvdA, and VVD), in terms of the number of times their politicians appeared on the screen, corresponded to a large extent with their strength in Parliament before the elections (respectively, 54, 49, and 22 out of a total of 150 seats). The appearances of politicians from D66 (who had 12 seats in the previous Parliament) reflected the success predicted for this party in opinion polls. Looking at the genres in which the politicians from the various parties appeared (T ables 3 and 4), the following picture can be drawn. The original campaign strategy of the CDA, which became a fiercely debated subject in the press, focused on infotainment, as the party’s campaign manager claimed in interviews much to the distress of the traditional rank and file. Nonetheless, CDA politicians were underrepresented in programs on the right-hand side of the informative- entertainment continuum. This can be explained by internal party differences about the “American-style” campaign of CDA leader Elco Brinkman and by the fact that he was named in a fraud scandal. Not only did he have much explaining to do on news and current affairs programs, but the infotainment genres seemed to have lost interest in the personal characteristics he so emphasized in the period prior to the 6 weeks before election day. The PvdA succeeded where CDA failed: They did well in the talk show category. Almost forty percent of PvdA leader Wim Kok’s television appearances were in this genre. This was part of the party’s campaign T able 2 Broadcast time devoted to politicians and audience viewing time by program genre and audience political interest

Broadcasting L ow political Moderate political H igh political time All adults interest interest interest

Minutes % Minutes % Minutes % Minutes % Minutes %

N ews 844 20.9 39 24.3 30 28.7 41 23.2 51 20.8 (H eavy) information 1,179 29.2 35 21.4 18 17.5 40 22.7 58 23.7 156 Current affairs 685 17.0 46 28.4 23 22.3 51 28.9 84 34.4 Party spots 433 10.7 9 5.7 6 5.3 10 5.4 17 6.9 T alk shows 595 14.7 15 9.5 11 10.2 18 10.0 19 7.8 Variety shows 64 1.6 1 .4 1 .6 1 .4 1 .4 E ntertainment 242 6.0 16 10.2 16 15.4 17 9.4 15 6.0 T otal 4,041 100.0 162 100.0 103 100.0 177 100.0 245 100.0

Note. F or example, during the election campaign, politicians appeared on the screen for 4,041 minutes, mostly (1,179 minutes, or more than 29%) on heavy information programs. People 18 years of age and older watched politicians, on average for 162 minutes, 35 minutes (21.4%) in heavy information programs. T hose with low political interest watched politicians for 103 minutes, mainly in the news (30 minutes, or 28.7%); people with moderate political interest watched politicans for 177 minutes, mainly in current affairs (51 minutes, almost 29%); and people with high political interest watched politicians 245 minutes, also mainly in current affairs (84 minutes, or 34.4%). T able 3 Broadcast time devoted to political parties by program genre

CDA PvdA VVD D 66 Other

Minutes % Minutes % Minutes % Minutes % Minutes %

N ews 405 29.6 250 20.1 96 14.9 96 14.6 43 7.7 157 (H eavy) information 389 28.5 462 37.1 234 36.5 255 39.1 103 18.3 Current affairs 266 19.5 175 14.1 91 14.1 102 15.7 100 17.8 Party spots 141 10.3 65 5.2 46 7.1 52 7.9 165 29.4 T alk shows 94 6.9 183 14.7 73 11.4 119 18.2 128 22.8 Variety shows 19 1.4 20 1.6 5 .8 12 1.8 8 1.4 E ntertainment 52 3.8 90 7.3 98 15.2 17 2.7 15 2.7 T otal 1,366 100.0 1,244 100.0 643 100.0 653 100.0 562 100.0

Note. CD A politicians were on the air 1,366 minutes, mainly in the news (405 minutes, or 29.6%). T hey used this program category almost as much as the other three big parties (PvdA, VVD, D66) combined (442 minutes). T able 4 Audience viewing time by political party and program genre

CDA PvdA VVD D 66 Other

Minutes % Minutes % Minutes % Minutes % Minutes %

N ews 17 31.0 12 24.6 5 16.2 5 18.2 2 10.5 158 (H eavy) information 11 20.7 13 26.3 8 25.4 9 35.3 4 21.1 Current affairs 17 31.7 12 23.6 7 22.3 7 26.2 6 31.6 Party spots 4 6.7 1 2.5 1 2.7 1 3.2 4 21.1 T alk shows 2 3.9 6 11.1 1 4.3 4 15.1 2 10.5 Variety shows 0 .4 0 .4 0 .4 0 .4 0 0 E ntertainment 3 5.6 6 11.5 9 28.8 0 1.6 1 5.3 T otal 55 100.0 50 100.0 31 100.0 26 100.0 19 100.0

Note. Viewers 18 years of age and older watched CDA politicians for a total of 55 minutes, mainly in the news (17 minutes) and current affairs (17 minutes). The Infotainment of Politics 159 strategy of changing the technocrat image of the party leader, according to comments made to us in an interview with the campaign manager. The number of appearances by VVD politicians was half that of their colleagues of the CDA and the PvdA, but VVD politicians were notably present in entertainment programs (15% of their total appearances, more than in news and current affairs programs). They topped all other parties in the entertainment category. Be- cause of the high ratings for this category in comparison with other categories, their share in viewing time was even higher. When a person watched a VVD politician on television, it was, in 29 percent of the cases, during an entertainment program. D66 politicians appeared on television more often than VVD politicians, but fewer viewers saw them. The D66 politicians were seen mainly on (heavy) information programs and talk shows, the former attracting a larger audience than the latter. D66ers rarely appeared on entertainment programs.

The Picture of Politics We now turn to the informative and entertaining elements within the various genres. We analyzed the topic, style, and format of 16 programs on both public and private channels. The cases were chosen from the seven program genres distinguished in the quantitative analysis: news, information (discussion programs), current affairs, party political broadcasts, talk shows, variety shows, and entertainment. Since news programs are a daily phenomenon, we selected four fairly typical programs, judging by the content analysis data reported by van Praag and van der Eijk. (We found greater differences between the public and the private channels than those reported by van Praag and van der Eijk.) Information programs are more infrequent, and the two selected were specially prepared for the election campaign. Current affairs programs are nonexistent on the commercial channels, and the two selected from the public channels are typical of this genre at election time. Talk and variety shows are characteristic of the hybrid- ization of genres and unfortunately played tricks with us. A program that we classi- fied as a variety show was coded as a talk show in the standard classification used by the Dutch broadcasting corporations. To avoid deviating from the quantitative data, we followed this coding and thus ended up with three talk shows and one variety show. For the entertainment programs, which rarely included politicians, we selected—less randomly—two in which politicians were very prominent. By law, all competing parties in the Netherlands have, in the weeks prior to the elections, free broadcasting time for six 3-minute spots on the public channels. In practice, one or two spots are made and repeated in that period. At one time before the 1994 elections, TV ads on the commercial channels were expected, but the plan fell through. The two political broadcasts we selected were from the two largest parties. The PvdA made only one ad, which they repeated, while CDA in the end produced and broadcast a second. We selected CDA’s major ad. We coded these spots on the basis of an extensive checklist. The taped programs were made available by the National Audiovisual Archives in Amsterdam. The checklist was based on the criteria mentioned in Table 1. For each program, the presence of informative and/or entertainment characteristics was noted and at- tributed to topic, style, and format. This resulted in scores ranging from fully informative to fully entertaining. The rare cases of disagreement between the two coders were solved by mutual discussions. 160 Kees Brants and Peter Neijens

Table 5 shows the programs’ scores on the infotainment scale. We calculated scores in such a way that, in the case of equal scores, topic and style were deemed more important than format.

T opic. With the exception of variety and entertainment shows, the content of the different programs showed a rather hybrid picture across the different genres. There was also no clear division between public and private commercial channels’ programs. Only three programs could be characterized as more or less fully informative as to their content. Two of the four news programs discussed the policy positions of the political parties, albeit only with respect to the key issue of unemployment. New unemployment figures were published in the middle of the campaign. There was a slight difference between public and private newscasts. The former gave more time to the content of the policy positions of the various political parties, and the latter con- centrated on framing the issue more in terms of disagreements between the parties. The private channel also paid special attention to the “hoopla” of that campaign day. Its second news program, for example, was entirely devoted to the hoopla of the campaign (politicians jogging, politicians presenting cake to the electorate, and so on) and the results of opinion polls (“hor se race” news). By contrast, the second public broadcasting news program presented a quarrel between two leading politicians, PvdA and CDA ministers, and a poll on who should be the new prime minister. (I n the Netherlands, the prime minister is not necessarily the leader of the largest party in Parliament.) There was a short policy item: criticism of the financial policy of the government by the director of the Dutch National Bank.

T able 5 Degree of infotainment in seven TV genres

Genre and channel T opic Style F ormat

Talk show 1 (public) i i i/e Information 1 (private) i i e/i News 1 (public) i i/e i Current affairs 1 (public) i/e i i News 2 (public) i/e i i News 3 (private) i/e i i/e Information 2 (public) i/e i i/e Current affairs 2 (public) i/e i/e e/i News 4 (private) e/i i/e i/e Talk show 2 (private) i/e e/i e/i Entertainment 1 (public) i/e e/i e Talk show 3 (public) e/i e/i e Party spot (CDA) e/i e i/e Party spot (PvdA) e/i e e/i Variety show (private) e e e Entertainment 2 (private) e e e

Note. i = informative; e = entertainment; i/e = mostly informative; e/i = mostly entertainment. The Infotainment of Politics 161

Next to hoopla and conflicts between parties, the (heavy) information programs dealt with policies with respect to the economy and the welfare state and the desired coalition of the parties that would form the government after the elections. In a multiparty parliamentary democracy, the “who with whom?” question is more important “horse race” information than “Who wins?” The public program was a trifle more entertaining than the private one, as were the two current affairs programs we studied. They did not deal with policy but paid attention only to hoopla and conflict. Both party political broadcasts contained little about issues and ideas. The PvdA (La bor) spot emphasized the personal image and emotional drive of its leader. It was Wim Kok’s life story in 3 minutes: his poor background, social-democratic motivation, and optimism for the future, possibly inspired by the British Labor Party’s broadcast on Neil Kinnock in the 1992 United Kingdom election. The CDA spot was a “testimonial” with others praising the quality, reliability, and social feelings of the party leader and the party. The talk shows presented ideas and characteristics of the politicians who appeared and were interviewed, but they differed among themselves. In the talk show of the evangelical broadcasting corporation (T alk Show 1), the emphasis was on the political ideas of the CDA candidate. The others ranged from the childishness of power plays in politics (T alk Show 2; on the private channel) to personal characteristics, family affairs, and hobbies (T alk Show 3; on the public channel). The variety show (a morning program) and the entertainment programs presented the politicians as human beings (mother, grandmother, musician) without reference to their political ideas. On the private channel’s entertainment program, five different politicians (one of them later became interior minister) even imperson- ated famous Dutch entertainers, while the public program was a quiz in which the VVD leader was asked about his personal ideas about tolerance, rather than the party’s position.

S tyle. There was a clearer distinction in the style of the programs along the expected continuum from news to entertainment. The style of just under half of the programs we studied—the news, (heavy) information, and current affairs genres and one of the talk shows—can be characterized as largely informative. The journalists seriously informed their audience in a professional way. Even in one of the talk shows, people interviewed were critical and distanced. One of the current affairs programs and two news programs had entertainment elements too. In one case, there was only a picture and no talk or questions, and the others favored the “open microphone” style, leaving ample space for the politician to tell his story. The style of all but one of the talk shows, the variety show, and the entertainment programs, not surprisingly, could be characterized as largely entertaining. The pre- senters are well-known personalities who claim a central role in the program. Their tone of voice is highly informal. These programs tend to be—and are probably meant to be—more entertaining than informing. The talk show of the (public) evangelical broadcasting station, however, had a highly informative style: The presenter was critical and detached, and he confronted his guest with different views. But there was virtually no difference between the other public and the private programs. The two party spots did not involve an interviewer with certain style characteristics. With both, the approach was clearly empathetic and not confrontational; neither of the spots was negative about other parties or politicians. 162 Kees Brants and Peter Neijens

Format. In format, more so than in style, we see more entertainment elements, especially in private programs. Only three programs—tw o news and one current affairs program—were “pure,” lacking elements such as music, audience, debates, or human interest pictures, such as politicians jogging. The format of the other programs varied, from slightly entertaining in one news program, one information program, the CDA spot, and one talk show, to mostly entertaining in one informative program, one current affairs program, the PvdA spot, and one talk show, to purely entertaining in a talk show, the variety show, and the entertainment programs. As with the other criteria, the talk show genre displayed its hybrid character in terms of format.

Conclusions Politicians have become embroiled in the “media logic” of the “modern publicity process” (Blumler, 1990), with soundbites, events focused on visualization, and activities scheduled to meet media deadlines. Nevertheless, the character of television as a pleasure machine has not yet tailored politicians’ activities to an infotainment logic. In the 6 weeks leading up to the 1994 Dutch national election, the majority of television appearances of politicians (78%) involved what we traditionally call informative program genres: (heavy) information, news, and current affairs programs. Only 22 percent of appearances were on infotainment and entertainment programs. A closer look, however, shows local differences corresponding with campaign strategies of the different parties or events during the campaign that attracted significant amounts of media attention. The Labor party leader, for instance, who had a specific image problem of being too cold and lacking in social feeling, spent almost 40 percent of his TV time on talk shows. Free-market Liberal party politicians appeared more on entertainment programs than on news or current affairs programs, which was part of the plan to overcome the supposed “dullness” o f their party leader. The leader of the Christian Democrats would have preferred to appear more often on infotainment programs, but his connection with a fraud case and internal party differences made him a prime “target” fo r informative programs. The limited number of appearances of politicians on infotainment and entertainment programs contradicted the expectation that politicians would focus on “nonpolitical” program genres. This expectation was based on the idea that they would try to win voters in a “nonpolitical way” as a result of the diminishing importance of political ideologies and declining party loyalty in the Dutch political system, the increasing competition between old public and new private channels, and the fragmentation of audiences. Our qualitative analysis of information and entertainment elements in different TV genres shows, however, that the change (if one can call it that, judging from one election) is not so much in the media strategy of political parties as in the signifying practice of television. Informational programs have become more entertainment focused; perhaps politicians did not perceive the need to focus on “nonpolitical” genres. There is a traditional idea of a genre-specific picture of politics that follows the informative-entertainment continuum. In informational programs, such as news and current affairs, politics is about decisions on policy issues made by serious public figures. In entertainment programs, there is no real politics; at most, there is information about politicians’ private lives. At best, we find these ideal types at the extremes of the continuum. In fact, almost all programs we analyzed had entertain- The Infotainment of Politics 163 ment aspects, in terms of topic, style, and format, and all paid little attention to policy positions of the various parties and little or no attention to party political fundamentals, ideology, and policies. The campaign was always connected with conflicts between parties and the consequences for possible coalition formation, within the context of the horse race and hoopla. This is not unique to the Nether- lands (Swanson & Mancini, 1996; Just et al., 1996). The picture is hybrid, though: A talk show may be more informative than a news or current affairs program, and private channels’ p rograms are not necessarily more geared to entertainment in their portrayal of politics. We did observe various interpretive frames in the different program genres. News, (heavy) information, and current affairs programs stress the idea that politics is serious and deals with conflict and struggle. Entertainment programs give no real picture of the content of politics but show politicians as ordinary people. Talk shows are most diverse. Some- times they frame politicians as serious people, but they can also picture them as nice or power seeking. Almost all programs show no clear-cut division between the use of entertainment and information. Different program genres may sometimes use the same interpretive frame, while a single program may well offer diverse frames. Our evidence points to a pragmatic approach in campaign reporting in the 1994 Dutch national election in which the public must be informed, as well as entertained with the spectacle of conflict and drama (Semetko et al., 1991). The traditional European image of campaign journalism of public broadcasting organi- zations is a more sacerdotal one whereby journalists inform the electorate about policy issues so that citizens can make an informed and rational choice at the ballot box. Reality is different, however, in both public and private broadcasting. Journalists—and politicians for that matter—do not limit themselves to the content of party programs and political debate. This does not necessarily imply that citizens receive no worthwhile information to make a choice. For one, rational behavior is based on a theoretically and empirically questionable notion of citizens as information-hungry political animals. Voters decide not on a cognitive level alone but also on the basis of affective elements found in the personal qualities of the candidates. A longitudinal analysis of the infotainment elements in political communication can, however, locate changes in the amount and quality of information available on which citizens may base their voting decisions. Further research could also show what this information environment means for citizens: in what way and to what extent programs in different positions on the infotainment scale contribute to the image and assessment of politics as a whole.

Notes 1. This article is based on a study performed in collaboration with Lex van Meurs of Intomart, the market research bureau that also provided the technical equipment for video- taping five channels around the clock (Brants et al., 1995). We would like to thank David Swanson and Holli Semetko for their stimulating and thoughtful comments. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 1997 meeting of the American Political Science Association in Washington, D.C.

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