An excerpt from the book ``The TV coverage of the elections''

The research covers 70 hours of program shown during the campaign, and the material is classified into four groups:

Evening news programs Official promotional programs TV campaign debates Promotional commercial programs.

In this excerpt we bring a part of the book on election strategies employed by RTS and NTV Studio B and an analysis of promotional commercial programs. In the next number of VREME we will present the main parts of the analysis devoted to the RTS evening news program (Dnevnik) and NTV Studio B's ``Days of the Week'' (Dani u nedelji), at the time of the elections.

Ahead of the last elections, the media scene in Serbia was dominated by the electronic media, especially television. As the buying power of the population diminished, the circulation of the newspapers dropped. Television was psychologically best suited to an audience which had been kept in a state of information saturation.

Television's preeminence meant the domination of one television stationSerbian RadioTelevision (RTS) and its political influence. Compared to all the other media in Serbia, and especially to the newlyfledged TV houses, RTS was absolutely superior in all aspects: finances, production, broadcasting capacities. Only RTS had a guaranteed source of income (the situation will be identical this December) and great production potential (technological and cadre). Only RTS had a broadcasting network which covered the entire country. Even though it has been transformed into a public company in the meantime, RTS has continued to function under the control of the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS). Cadre changes such as the suspension of a large number of politically active journalists, and the election of the RTS Director to the SPS leadership, led to the increased influence of one party over editorial policy. NTV Studio B programs had the greatest political influence among commercial TV stations, but their program could be seen only in the vicinity of Belgrade. NTV Studio B's production was also small.

Both the ruling party and the opposition parties recognized television as the most powerful media for influencing voters. Because of RTS's extensive coverage and influence, the main struggle during preparations for the elections was over conditions for the presentation of campaigns on the ``big'' televisionand the ways in which it would define the campaigns.

Both television houses established campaign programs as part of their regular news programs. The elections were the main topic of the news hour for the six weeks of the campaign. The evening news programs were the most watched TV programs in Serbia. With their information, dominantly narrative structure and selection of topics, RTS and NTV shaped the scene for the voters' decisionmaking. The desired interpretation of events was ensured by placing information within contexts of interpreted reality.

RTS channeled the voters to the viewpoint that an international conspiracy against the Serbian people had been mounted, towards the suffering of the Serbs in BosniaHerzegovina who had been sucked into war in defence of their hearths. In spite of the strengthening of outside pressure, especially from the West which ``unjustly'' accused Bosnian Serbs of aggression, and Serbia of involvement in the ethnicreligious war, this pressure was successfully countered by patriotic forces. This approach in presenting the ``Serbian question'' was set up as the dominant formula from the moment of the first conflicts in the former Yugoslavia.

NTV offered the voters a very different view of the world and an understanding of the consequences of election results. NTV started as an alternative TV network, and in its daily work offered the public an opportunity of understanding and recognizing social experiences which were incompatible with the dominant interpretation of the social crisis. During the campaign, in its news programs NTV laid emphasis on the possibility of a foreign intervention against Serbia's undemocratic regime whose continuance in power was ensured by stepping up the war in BH, and the further deterioration of the overall social situation in Serbia.

The same problems were the main topics of the campaign in these juxtaposed versions of the same events. RTS underscored the need for the protection of Serbia's national interests and a resistance of international pressures, as the key issue of the elections. NTV news programs presented the necessity for a change of authority in Serbia as the crucial question. The first issue overlapped with the campaign target promoted by the SPS and the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), while the second coincided with the campaign goals of the opposition coalition DEPOS (the Democratic Movement of Serbia) and presidential candidate Milan Panic.

On the one hand, RTS and NTV did not allow the challenging and changing of programs over which they had total control, while on the other hand, because of the nature of the media's influence, they weren't capable of changing these formulas much, since these frameworks had been implanted in public consciousness a long time before the campaign had even started.

Statesponsored television underscored its neutral role in the election race. It aimed at creating the impression of being a passive mediator, one which had made its big screen and prime time programs available to all those taking part in the campaign. RTS designed its programs with an emphasis on the fact that all were being treated equally. All the participants were offered the same wretched studio, miserable decor, static cameras, a passive host with a set of identical rhetorical questions (in the programs presenting the parties and candidates), or programs with very limited debates on differences between various political options. RTS turned promotional programs into nontelevision and a series of routinely monotonous monologues, while the debates deteriorated into quarrels between participants, and the media's greatest campaign disaster.

NTV opted for another approach. Unburdened with special obligations towards all the participants in the campaign, it shaped the elections as a race with clearly recognizable favorites. Its entire campaign strategy was less rigid, and it did not shy away from defining a negative favorite: SRS representatives were never seen on NTV programs, and only mentioned twice in the news hour.

NTV engaged a smaller, but more competent and professional team of journalists who aimed at presenting the campaign as plastically as possible. At the same time, they cut down the campaign scene by an important party (SRS) which was also ignored by the ruling party which presented it from the opposition angle. NTV shaped its programs as a juxtaposition of differences. The way the programs were conceived, their dialogues, and the active role of the journalists who presented the viewers' side in dialogues with party representatives, allowed campaign rivals to establish themselves in the public's consciousness as the carriers of various options of a future social life within the context of an existing reality.

After the SPS launched its series of ``This is Serbia'' spots showing Serbia's natural beauty spots and cultural heritage, DEPOS came out with ``This too is Serbia,'' but presenting the darker side of life in Serbia (future immigrants queuing in front of embassies, shortages, misery, refugees, crime). RTS immediately stopped broadcasting DEPOS's spots, believing them to be a direct allusion to the SPS message; this move gave rise to complaints and protests. The 1992 December elections saw an enormous production of posters. Practically all the participants in the campaign took the opportunity of presenting their main campaign messages and promises via TV spots. Both TV networks broadcast a record number of commercials. RTS grouped these messages into a separate block, separating them from the rest of the program (in the TV news hour, commercials and not political spots were broadcast), while NTV broadcast such spots during the usual intervals in its program.

RTS broadcast all the spots (2,661 times), while NTV broadcast the majority of them (a total of 1,032 times). The four biggest parties and the two presidential candidates had the greatest number of spots which were broadcast the greatest number of times, so that commercial production reflected the general lines of the campaign, the political strength of the main contenders and the competency of their marketing strategies. During the campaign the SPS broadcast 48 spots (40 basic ones and 8 variations), and was the absolute champion in the number of times they were broadcast958 times on RTS and 53 times on NTV. DEPOS had 30 spots which were broadcast 992 times on RTS and 406 times on NTV. The Democratic Party had ten spots which were broadcast 362 times on RTS and 573 times on NTV. The SRS had two spots (the main one had seven variations) and they were broadcast only on RTS349 times.

The presidential campaign was characterized by the spots of the two candidates and an absence of commercials devoted to Slobodan Milosevic, the current president and chief candidate this time again. Such a situation is defined as a campaign conducted in the absence of a favorite. Milan Panic had the most extensive promotional campaign. His seven spots were broadcast 226 times on RTS and 246 times on NTV. Jezdimir Vasiljevic had four spots and they were broadcast 380 times on RTS and 375 times on NTV.

Political parties

All participants in the campaign stated their promises very precisely: their rhetoric in describing the future was more precise in the commercials which called for a change than in those which offered continuity. While the first based their political promises on social and economic issues (Depos, Democratic Party), the second underscored patriotic topics as the dominant feature of the upcoming elections and future life. The SPS and SRS emphasized the Serbian national issue as the main topic of their campaigns and this was in accordance with their general campaign presentation. The other two leading parties focused on various topicsDEPOS concentrated on economic questions, while the DS kept to universal issues. The awakening of national pride and patriotism, i.e., a concern for the future and a general apprehension were presented rhetorically and visually. The narrative parts of the spots confirmed the values which the participants in the campaign considered most important for society and for winning votes. These were patriotism, the future, the position of the Serbian people, tradition, national pride, peace. This scale of values was supported by visual symbols: national folklore, traditional and heraldic symbols. All this was accompanied by music: the majority of the commercials had national, folk and popular music in the background. Most of the spots were shot in nature or a rural ambience, rarely in an urban environment; preference was given to public settings over ordinary everyday activities. In many of the spots there are no people, so that the voters' decision is presented as loyalty to the land (``This is Serbia,'' ``A decision on the fate of the Serbian people is being made here.'') The voter is rarely addressed as a personmost of the parties addressed ``Serbia'' (``Serbia chooses,'' or the impersonal ``Voting is a choice''). Only the Democratic Party (DS) stressed the importance of each voter's vote (they had a series ``My vote'') and DEPOS, which insisted on the far reaching consequences of the voters' decision (``Our life depends on the way we vote'').

The rhetorical standardization of some generally accepted facts and values are typical of the SPS approach to voters, including their successful transformation of chosen phrases into easily recognizable and popular idioms (``That's the way things should be,'' ``Serbia will not bow''). Compared to the other programs, it is obvious that similar topics and values espoused by the SPS and the SRS dominated the campaign.