Electoral management bodies often fail to make the best use of their media opportunities because of lack of preparation. Especially through the electronic media, EMBs can often be reactive rather than proactive. Officials are interviewed by news programmes but often fail to get their messages across to the electorate, either through lack of interview skills or a conflict between the different agendas of interviewer and interviewee. Preparing audio or video material in advance will often be a way of ensuring that the EMB gets its own message across in exactly the way that it chooses.

EMBs may be assigned voter information slots on public broadcasters (or sometimes as a licence condition for private broadcasters). Alternatively, they may buy airtime from broadcasters (or even persuade them to donate it free of charge). In countries where broadcasting is underdeveloped and there is a shortage of available material for airing, EMBs may easily get their materials broadcast for free, especially if they are lively, creative, and entertaining.

The advantages of pre-recording electoral material are the following:

• The EMB can decide exactly what is its message and formulate this message in its own words.
• The EMB can provide the materials in advance to broadcasters.
• The EMB can use creative techniques to convey its messages.

Pre-recorded materials are most likely to cover basic voter education and information issues. But the fact that the information is simple and basic does not rule out the use of imaginative means to convey messages. One popular and effective means is to use soap operas or songs to communicate messages – broadcasts that will be entertaining in themselves, as well as having serious meaning.

In Sierra Leone, for example, a radio soap opera called Atunda Ayenda (“Lost and Found”) dealt with various issues relating to peacebuilding after the country’s long civil war. Part of this focused on voter education. One episode, for example, dealt with misplacement of voter ID cards, interference by paramount chiefs in the election process, the voting process, and non-violent political campaigning.

Similarly, in Tanzania’s transitional elections in 1995, a soap opera broadcast as part of the Mnazi Mmoja radio magazine programme introduced voters to political and electoral issues. There were also animal fables. One told of a toothless old lion who did not see why he should stand for election: he had always been leader. He is supplanted by the self-confident lioness who does all the hunting.