NEWS ANALYSIS : Democrats Succeed in Getting Message Across : Media: Through luck and diligence, the party was able to portray Clinton just as it wanted on TV and in newspapers.

The actors kept ad-libbing their lines, the director was never firmly in control and they started shooting without a finished script. Yet in the end, the producers got the big commercial they had wanted up on the screen.

The Democrats came to this often angry city this week with two goals for their national convention: reintroduce Bill Clinton to Americans as a political Horatio Alger story who overcame modest surroundings and a broken family, and drive home the message that the party had become more centrist and interested in the working middle class.

Although the public rarely saw it, plenty could have gone wrong, especially early on. The planning in advance and the control exercised by party officials along the way was often lax.

The party has changed less, in many ways, than Clinton and his allies like to admit.

But through the looking glass of the media--the prime target of modern political conventions--the party now led by Clinton managed to deliver the message it desired.

“Call it what you will, the Democratic Party has changed course this week,” Bryant Gumbel declared on NBC-TV’s “Today” show on Thursday morning.

“The Democratic Party gives a very good impression today of feeling better about itself as a unified force in American politics than it has for many years,” anchorman Peter Jennings announced on ABC-TV on Wednesday.

Even Democrats from the party’s liberal wing--from which, for the most part, Clinton sought to distance himself--persuaded the press of their sincerity in embracing him.

“New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, a reluctant convert, sounded like a true believer,” CBS-TV’s Richard Threlkeld said. The New York Times called Cuomo’s nominating speech for Clinton “impassioned.”

To understand just how important the media are to conventions, just consider a private planning document that the party used to put the convention together. In large part, the book contained such information as what days of the week have the highest viewership and how many households are wired for cable.

In such a world, the convention does not exist simply between the falls of the gavel, or even as an event inside the hall. Realistically, the network television morning shows, the evening news broadcasts and the late local news are as integral to the proceedings as the actual convention or the now much-abbreviated live coverage during prime time. Party planning documents refer to these other outlets as “saturation sources.”

The party even set up its own satellite channel, which fed material produced by the party and sent free-of-charge to local stations back home. Its “video press releases” included interviews with politicians conducted by their own press secretaries.

In the early part of the week, the Democrats were lucky before they were good.

“These guys were totally disorganized until last weekend,” one network executive producer said. “Their schedule made no sense at all and would have made terrible television.”

Finally, things changed after a network executive called the party and angrily said the networks could not live with the poor planning.

The Clinton campaign and convention organizers similarly failed in their wish to clear and coordinate all the speeches, leaving them vulnerable to the kind of fractious and confusing message that has characterized troubled Democratic gatherings of the past.

Of the three keynote speeches, Clinton’s campaign had guiding input into only one--the address delivered by Georgia Gov. Zell Miller. Fellow keynoter Bill Bradley, the senator from New Jersey, mentioned Clinton only in passing, and former Texas Rep. Barbara Jordan did not manage even that. Privately, Clinton aides were not pleased.

Yet on ABC, commentator Jeff Greenfield declared that the “Democrats are off to a very good start,” Monday night.

Similarly, NBC and CBS aired stories Tuesday on the year of the women in politics, precisely the message the Clinton camp was hoping for that day.

“Bill Clinton and his team have managed to keep this convention right where they want it--in the middle of the road with no major crackups,” NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw said Tuesday.

By Wednesday, the convention was operating by plan rather than mere fortune, and Clinton aides were visibly more comfortable. The aides had indicated concern to reporters that Cuomo would prove difficult to control, but he gave exactly the speech that Clinton had hoped he would. It even included familiar phrases from Clinton’s rhetorical handbook, exactly the kind of echo effect that modern politicians crave.

The moment that most delighted Clinton’s team, fittingly, was not a speech or political maneuver but a bit of pure made-for-TV theatrics: A late-night walk through the streets of New York by Clinton, his wife and daughter into Madison Square Garden minutes after the delegates there had officially made him the nominee. Arranged by Hollywood TV producer Harry Thomason--a longtime Clinton friend--the stroll into the hall kept ABC, CBS and NBC convention coverage on the air an extra 30 minutes.

The triumphant image of Clinton--in the arms of his family--proclaiming himself the “comeback kid” was replayed endlessly that night and the next day.

Although the message relayed by the print media generally was more complicated, it also seemed to reflect roughly what the Clinton camp wanted.

The major newspapers and magazines began the week with long profiles suggesting that Clinton’s character deserved a more calm and possibly positive reassessment. “Though there has been much agonizing in the campaign and in the press over the ‘character issue,’ ” the Wall Street Journal wrote Monday, “enormous attention has been paid to isolated episodes in Mr. Clinton’s life and astonishingly little to his character itself.”

The positive impression deepened as the week progressed. “Democrats Find Unity in the Center,” declared the Boston Globe Wednesday. “New Voice for America,” the Los Angeles Times headline read Thursday.

The Democrats even managed to avoid the wrath of a team of surrogates for President Bush who had traveled to New York to appear at press conferences and make TV appearances in hopes of diluting the Democratic message. In large part, the press ignored them.

One wild card that developed was how the press would play the sudden collapse of Ross Perot, which became a side show to the convention. It generally was cast as a problem for the Democrats. “Can Clinton win if Perot doesn’t run?” ABC’s Jennings asked his correspondents Wednesday.

But by Thursday, the networks were less sure of the effects of Perot’s decision not to seek the presidency. Even GOP national Chairman Richard N. Bond said that it would take weeks to sort that out.