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setting for a modern party and was, at the same time, safe because it was about an
undisputed topic.

While professionalisation is usually associated with campaign management, it is
overlooked – although often discussed – that modern campaigns also require
professionalised candidates. The heavy emphasis of modern campaigns on individual
candidates, even where parties dominate the political system, goes hand in hand with
professionalisation and places great demands on the candidate. When Gerhard
Schröder was nominated as the SPD chancellor candidate in 1998, he was the fifth to
challenge the incumbent chancellor Helmut Kohl. Schröder was officially nominated
with a perfectly staged ‘coronation’ at a party convention in mid-April, which the media
compared to a sports event or the Oscar awards night. For this and other events, the
party hired a specialised events agency (cf.Holtz-Bacha 1999,p.9).

Even before he became the chancellor candidate of his party, Schröder was known to
be an apt ‘telepolitician’ who knew how to use the media. He was described as an
‘instant politician who dissolves easily in any media format’ (Kurt 1998, p. 574;
translation by the author).This quality made it easy for him to grasp the necessities of a
modern election campaign and to follow the scripts for his appearances.While experts
like the former CDU’s campaign manager, Peter Radunski, always complained about the
candidates not complying with the requirements of modern campaigns and the
recommendations of their consultants, Schröder was probably the first German
chancellor candidate who easily and seemingly happily indulged the media campaign.

More than previous SPD chancellor candidates, Schröder succeeded in maintaining a
television presence throughout the campaign. While the opposition candidate in
The Professionalisation of Political Communication
Germany has a traditional disadvantage compared to the incumbent chancellor, who
enjoys a bonus because whatever he does is newsworthy (cf. Semetko & Schoenbach
1994, p. 132), Schröder got more television time than earlier challengers to Kohl. In
addition, he was much more favourably evaluated than Kohl (cf. e.g. Schneider et al.
1999; Caspari et al.1999).

Among the media adaptation strategies of the German parties, and often regarded as
an obvious consequence of the commercialised media world, is a trend towards
‘entertainisation’, or in other words, the attempt to make politics entertaining and to sell
politics through entertainment. In 1998, campaigners contributed to this trend with
appearances on the more entertaining television programmes. With their generally
high ratings, entertainment programmes not only offer politicians the opportunity to
reach a wide audience, but also allow them to reach viewers who are not normally
interested in politics.Moreover,it is an inadvertent audience,because viewers tune in to
be entertained, and do not expect political information. Appearances on entertainment
programmes such as talk shows, late night shows, quiz shows, or soap operas, have thus
become a more and more important element of campaign strategies. Although again
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