Page 121 - Living Room WarsDesprately Seeking the Audience Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World

Netherlands: VARA and the loss of the natural audience 109
In these words, the perceived need to direct programmes more to the mass audience was
still cast in idealistic, reformist terms. But when the situation became more critical—at
least when considered in marketing terms: VARA’s position in relation to the
competition was lamentable—the tone became more impatient, more threatening, as in a
policy plan from 1984, where it was bluntly stated that ‘it is not our identity that is our
first problem, but our popularity’ (VARA 1984:23).
In this development the meaning of the term ‘popularity’ tended to shrink to its most
trivial, quantitative dimension, devoid of the political and cultural meanings of ‘the
popular’ which informed VARA discourse in earlier years. ‘Popularity’ has become little
more than ‘reaching a large audience’: something which, of course, can be measured by
ratings! But on the other hand, it was impossible for VARA to completely forsake the
ideological dimensions of its ‘identity’, if only to differentiate itself from shamelessly
‘commercial’ organizations such as TROS and Veronica. Thus the task was to forge a
synthesis of a commercial definition of popularity and a populist sense of progressiveness
(Ang 1987). This led to quite supercilious rhetorical constructions in official VARA
discourse:

It is VARA’s mission to make programmes—in every category—that are
best viewed, listened to, and appreciated…. Not because high viewing and
listening figures are an end in itself, but because VARA in its totality has
something to say and to show, that it deliberately wants to bring to the
public’s attention. VARA is a broadcasting organization with an ideal and
that is the reason why she consequently strives to get the biggest reach.
VARA programmes must win from all others.
(VARA 1984:14)

Here, popularity (in terms of ratings success) was now squarely seen as instrumental to,
and relatively independent of, achieving progressiveness. The popular and the
progressive were now conceived as two entities external, sometimes even in opposition,
to each other: the first embraced the idea of audience-as-market (consisting of consumers
to be reached), the second retained the idea of audience-as-public (consisting of citizens
to be educated and reformed). In a particularly strident 1983 policy statement, a magical
solution to this contradictory construction of VARA’s audience was forged in the the
evocation of the ‘ordinary people’ as its ‘natural constituency’ (VARA 1983b). However,
now this ‘natural constituency’ is defined not by referring to a pre-existent political and
cultural community, but by applying the commercial instrument of market segmentation:
it consists of those ‘between 25 and 55 with such a low income that they are covered by
the National Health Service, and whose schooling ranges from elementary education to
lower vocational training’. This market segment makes up, as the writers of the plan
16
would have it, at least 40 per cent of the Dutch population. But the plan did not leave it
at this juggling with demographics. It also constructed the ‘ordinary people’ as those who
are most vulnerable to the dangers of ‘reproletarization’ (as a result of watching too much
commercial television), which VARA wishes to combat:

VARA has nothing against the audience watching violent scuffles and
relationships in the lives of oil magnates [this was the time that Dallas and