THE INFOTAINMENT OF POLITICS

In the 1994 election, political parties and politicians in the Netherl ands were, for the first time, confronted with a dual broadcasting sys tem. New commercial stations joined the broadcasting landscape alongsi de the public broadcasting channels, which by law and tradition had ve ry much functioned as a balanced platform for political communication. As a consequence of competition, one could expect politicians to focu s their media campaigning more on newly available ''infotainment''-typ e programs, changing the conduct of politics. Nonetheless, a 6-week, a round-the-clock content analysis of three public and two private chann els showed that more than three quarters of politicians' television ap pearances were on the traditional informative programs. This article i ntroduces criteria for an ''infotainment scale'' and a method for anal yzing 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 entertainme nt.