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. But in the end, the producers got most of 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, although his acceptance speech may have been somewhat anticlimactic.

“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,” ABC-TV anchorman Peter Jennings announced Wednesday.

Even Democrats from the party’s liberal wing 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 crowning event came when Clinton accepted his nomination Thursday night. Beforehand, the press declared it needed to be nearly perfect: “Clinton knows his convention speech Thursday must be the speech of his life,” Threlkeld said.

Afterward, it was not clear if he had succeeded. “What a lot of people will be talking about is the length of the speech,” NBC commentator John Chancellor declared coolly.

“The person who really electrified this hall tonight was Al Gore, not Bill Clinton,” said ABC’s Cokie Roberts.

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

“We all know that network coverage is declining both in terms of hours aired and ratings, but the convention still has a dramatic influence on the polls,” the document reads.

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.

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.

But 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 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 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.

All this might have been wasted had Clinton delivered a dreadful speech Thursday. After the buffeting he took in the primaries, the press generally predicted that Clinton had much to accomplish in reintroducing himself to the nation.

Although he tried mightily to do that, his long and detailed speech was probably not the convention’s highlight. “Some people did feel it was a bit long, but the reaction was positive,” CBS’ Ed Bradley declared after prowling the convention floor.

“A lot of nuts and bolts,” Jennings said.

Leading up to Thursday night, the message relayed by the print media also seemed to reflect roughly what the Clinton camp wanted.

The major newspapers and magazines began the week with 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,” a Los Angeles Times headline read Thursday.