Maybe it was the TAEBO Live! 4-pack Workout DVD in which men and women kick and punch their way toward losing unwanted pounds and revealing the buff bod hiding inside all of us.
Or maybe you were mesmerized by the Turbo Cooker 1838, an astonishing cooking system that bakes, boils, broils, braises, fries, steams and stews all your favorite dishes.
Whatever caught your eye, there you were, 28 minutes later, with credit card in hand, dialing an 800 number ordering something like a Flowbee, the gadget that you put on your head so that a suction can pull your hair up and allow recessed blades to cut your untamed mane.
Big business
This year is the 20th anniversary of those ubiquitous 28-minute feature-length TV ads, better known as infomercials. Every year, men and mostly women shell out more than a billion dollars buying up stain eliminators, hair removers, veggie choppers, fat reducers and more. If you include short-form spot ads that drive people to stores searching for “As Seen on TV” products, gross revenue for such infomercials rose to $154.1 billion last year. That’s almost an 81 percent jump in just six years. Combine TV, radio and Internet retailing, and it’s a staggering $256 billion industry.
To borrow a line from uber-infomercial king Ron Popeil: “a-MAZ-ing.”
“Television learned a while back that people had more tolerance for advertising than once thought,” said Gary Edgerton, an Old Dominion University professor and co-editor of the Journal of Popular Film and Television.
Lengthy commercials for home remedies and cooking programs existed long before infomercials, but they faded from fashion in the ’50s and ’60s when the Federal Communications Commission began cracking down on the number and length of TV ads. For years, the FCC allowed only 16 minutes of ads per hour of programming, and they were limited to 30-second to 2-minute spots spread through the show, according to the Electronic Retailing Association.
But the proliferation of cable stations led to intense lobbying against those restrictions. In 1984, the industry succeeded, persuading the Reagan administration to deregulate the amount of advertising time allowed per hour on TV.
Enter Herbalife. The weight loss and nutrition products infomercial debuted on a Sunday evening 20 years ago on the cable channel USA Network. Cable stations, hungry for revenue and eager to fill the air with cheap programming, sold half-hour blocks for a few hundred dollars to entrepreneurs eager to promote their wares.
Industry watcher Steven Dworman says infomercials actually helped new and struggling cable channels such as Black Entertainment Television generate enough money to survive the early years.
Soon, infomercials didn’t just interrupt regular programming, in some cases, they became the programming: Their success helped spawn channels such as QVC and the Home Shopping Network.
In 1980, there were a mere 28 networks vying for consumer attention; today, there are 339 networks on cable or satellite TV, making it that much harder for infomercials to find an audience. It also costs a lot more to buy air time and produce an infomercial these days.
In 1991, one out of seven infomercials was able to turn a profit. These days? Only one out of 60 is financially successful.
“Look at it this way: Every year, major television networks develop 25 or 30 television scripts,” said Dworman, a Los Angeles-based infomercial expert who runs www.drtvsecrets.com. “Out of that, they might develop 10 pilots and maybe put one or two on the air. Within a couple months, they’re lucky if one show is still on the air. All they want you to do is watch.
`Kind of a miracle’
“With infomercials, day or night, their viewers have to find one by accident while flipping through channels,” Dworman said. “Then, you have to be so enthralled, you have to watch the entire thing. By the end, you have to be so excited, you have to pick up the phone and give the producers money for the product. That’s kind of a miracle.”
That means that for every Proactiv Solution — the answer for embarrassing acne, according to superstar spokeswoman Vanessa Williams — that sold $600 million worth of skin products last year, there are dozens of flops. The winning formula is basic. Frustrated consumer has problem. Thrilled info-host introduces solution. Increasingly ecstatic info-host demonstrates gizmo. Cue testimonials from happy users. Frustrated consumer, grinning from ear to ear, proclaims it life-changing experience. Cue selling price, usually just $19.99 or three easy payments of $29.99, shipping and handling not included.
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