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112 Communication Theory & Research
TABLE 8.1 THE DEGREE OF INFOTAINMENT OF SEVEN TELEVISION GENRES

Informative – entertainment
Genre and channel Topic Style Format
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.

crisis of civic communication covers more ground than infotainment alone.
While he and other academics, journalists and politicians in different European
countries seem to hold it very much against the bad influence that is coming
from across the Atlantic, scholars in the United States are also increasingly
worried about the entertainment focus of many a candidate and about ‘talk
show democracy’ (Brokaw et al., 1997).
To weigh the pros and cons one has to be sure what the dangers are. The
infotaining or popularization of politics on television is, I believe, problematic
under three conditions: if that is the dominant form in which politics is
portrayed; if it is done to hide something else; or, if it leads to a distorted image
of politics. Neither of these conditions seem to be unconditionally the case.

Dominance of infotainment

A longitudinal, cross-Europe content analysis could give an answer to this, but
so far research is scattered. In the overview of studies on television news in a
number of West European countries, there is many an example of entertainment
elements in the content and style of political reporting. But on the whole, the
picture is at best ambiguous and certainly does not point to infotainment taking
over and to an unequivocally bad influence of commercial television. With most
private stations and the public broadcasters, the news remains at the heart of
their programming, and politics still forms a substantial part of most news
programmes. The coming of commercial television may have resulted in