TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/061791/0617250.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.0 KB | 123 lines

                                                                                VIDEO, Page 71

It's Amazing! Call Now!


Infomercials are filling the late-night hours with tacky pitches
for everything from kitchen tools to baldness cures

By RICHARD ZOGLIN -- Reported by Thomas McCarroll/New York


    Johnny Carson and Ted Koppel have gone to bed and so has
the Ziploc talking finger. But late night is when TV's
hucksters really get humming. Amazing baldness cures and miracle
weight-loss plans. Kitchen tools and anticellulite treatments.
Self-help courses and get-rich-quick schemes. Stick around:
you'll learn all about Citrus Miracle, a spray cleaner made from
"100% natural oranges," able to wipe out everything from oven
grease to carpet stains. Or share a few teary minutes with
Richard Simmons as he travels the country getting testimonials
from converts to his Deal-a-Meal diet plan. Or learn how
fulfilling your life can be with the Brain Supercharger, a set
of self-improvement tapes ($149.95) that promise to raise your
I.Q. and bring you "meaningful and lasting love relationships."

    Not since the legendary Veg-O-Matic ("It slices! It
dices!") has TV advertising been so gloriously tacky. The reason
is a burgeoning genre known as the infomercial. These are
program-size commercials that are disguised as real shows.
Usually half an hour in length, they are produced entirely by
an advertiser whose goal is to get viewers to reach for the
phone and dial that ever present 800 number. In order to make
these pitches seem like actual shows worth watching, they
feature bright-eyed hosts, enthusiastic studio audiences and
bogus names like Incredible Breakthroughs and Amazing
Discoveries. They are increasingly populated with celebrities.
Victoria Principal, Ali MacGraw, John Ritter, Art Linkletter,
Fran Tarkenton, Meredith Baxter and Cathy Lee Crosby are among
the stars who moonlight as salespeople in the wee hours.

    Infomercials got their initial boost in 1984, when the
Federal Communications Commission freed local stations from
limits on the amount of commercial time they could air. Hundreds
of local broadcast stations, as well as such national cable
networks as Lifetime and Black Entertainment Television, now
carry at least some infomercials, usually in the late-night
hours. For TV stations, these program-length ads provide a tidy
source of revenue from little watched time periods. (Half an
hour of postmidnight airtime can bring in between $5,000 and
$20,000 in big-city markets.) For an advertiser with a steam
iron or self-help course to flog, an infomercial can be a good
way to corral viewers for a long, hard sell. A 30-minute ad for
a hand mixer from Kitchenmate cost just $125,000 to make and has
generated $55 million in sales, according to its producer, the
Guthy-Renker Corp. Altogether, infomercials generated $500
million in sales last year; that figure is expected to increase
to $800 million by 1992.

    The tacky look and hyperbolic claims of these ads have
made many station executives uncomfortable with them. But not
uncomfortable enough to refuse them. Infomercial telecasts have
increased from 2,500 a month in 1985 to more than 21,000 today.
"Most people are holding their nose but taking the money," says
an executive at New York's WNBC-TV. "It's a lure and a curse."

    The Federal Trade Commission has cracked down on a handful
of infomercials for unsubstantiated claims, misrepresentation
or outright fraud. One was the EuroTrym Diet Patch, an adhesive
disk that attached to the skin and was supposed to curb the
appetite. (It didn't.) The producer was slapped with a $1.5
million fine for making false claims for the device, as well as
for two other products, Y-Bron, an impotence remedy, and
Foliplexx, a treatment for baldness. At least six more
infomercials are currently under investigation. "People are
mesmerized by TV," says Barry Cutler, director of the FTC's
Bureau of Consumer Protection. "They wouldn't give this stuff
a second thought if they saw it on the back of some supermarket
magazine. But they believe it because it's on television."

    Infomercial producers admit there have been some abuses
but claim the industry has cleaned up its act. Early pioneers
of the genre "came mainly from print advertising," says Gene
Silverman, vice president of Hawthorne Communications, a leading
producer of infomercials. "They brought their over-the-line
methods with them." The industry has since formed a trade
organization and fashioned its own content guidelines, similar
to those proposed by government regulators. Among them: the
programs must be clearly labeled as commercials, and product
claims must be carefully substantiated.

    The recession has reduced the viewer response rate for
some infomercials, but at the same time it has made the lengthy
commercials even more attractive to stations: when ad revenues
are slack, it is hard to turn down an advertiser who wants to
purchase a big chunk of time. "The more financially pressed
stations are, the less they're offended by infomercials," says
Rader Hayes, a consumer economist at the University of
Wisconsin. In a survey released in January by the National
Association of Television Program Executives, 90% of station
officials who responded said they have run at least some
infomercials, and 49% said their use of them is likely to grow
in the future.

    Infomercials may be on the verge of going big time.
Several major companies are experimenting with the format.
General Motors, for example, recently introduced an infomercial
to tout its new line of Saturn cars. AT&T is reportedly
exploring the format as well. (Time-Life Music currently runs
pitches for collections of hits from the Big Band era and the
rock-'n'-roll years.) They will never supplant The Simpsons or
Entertainment Tonight, but in fringe time periods, infomercials
could become Madison Avenue's next hot format. Half an hour with
the Ziploc finger: now that would be amazing!