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Who’s Afraid of Infotainment? 109

30
25

20
% 15
10

5
0
News Information Current affairs Party spots Talk show Variety shows Entertainment

Key: Exposure Viewing time

FIGURE 8.1 EXPOSURE AND VIEWING TIME POLITICIANS ACCORDING TO GENRE

current affairs, party political broadcasts, talk shows (both vox-pop and light
interview programmes) and entertainment (game shows, music programmes).
The classification assumes an ideal type, ‘traditional’ continuum ranging from
informative to entertainment programmes, in which we followed the standard
division used by the Dutch broadcasting corporations for analysing audience
data. The use of this so-called People Meter (providing data based on a
representative sample of the Dutch population) in combination with the
different programme types thus enabled us to calculate how many and which
people were watching the politicians and for how long. Or in other words: did
the politicians actually reach the audience/electorate they wanted?
Contrary to the expectation that – with an electorate scattered over channels
and genres – politicians would follow the audience, the traditional informative
programmes still accounted for more than three-quarters of the air time with
politicians (see Figure 8.1). Talk and variety shows and entertainment programmes
only had a limited share (22 percent) of politicians’ performances. With the
exception of party political broadcasts, which generally seem to talk in relative
emptiness, and entertainment, the audience was also more interested in the
informative programmes. As it turned out, the informative programmes were
also for the politically less interested the main window for seeing politicians at
election time.
There was a marked difference between parties and between party leaders and
other candidates. The new leader of the Christian Democratic Party (CDA) had
opted for an American-style, image-oriented and human interest campaign and,
as his campaign manager claimed in interviews, his media focus was on
infotainment genres. He was, however, underrepresented in the kind of
programmes on that side of the informative–entertainment continuum. Internal