It’s struck me lately how frequently I’m seeing these infomercials all of a sudden, I don’t recall such a bombardment in recent history. I don’t know if there is any truth to this or if my memory is skewed by the craziness (and therefore memorability) of the ones running now. I seem to remember a few years ago thinking that the TV infomercial was on the decline and being made obsolete by internet shopping, now I see the inaccuracy of that assumption.
Is there somewhere I can find statistics for this?
Edit: Ug, I meant for this to be in GQ. But I’ll roll with it.
While I don’t have any statistics to back it up, I agree with you completely. There are a lot more informercials than there used to be even just a few years ago.
I’m in Canada, so things may be (and probably are) different up here, but is the proliferation of infomercials indirectly due to the proliferation of specialty channels? I haven’t counted, but it seems to me they are much more common on specialty (e.g. History Channel, TLC, etc. ) channels than normal ones. Maybe they use them as filler to cut down on the constant repetitions of programs.
30-minute advertisements, as a general concept, needn’t ever go away. But what strikes me is that the infomercials are using the same cheesy direction, graphics, cliches, etc. that they always have. What’s up with that? Is it the same people still selling these things? Are they just slow? Or is shouting and offering “easy payments” really the ideal sales pitch today as it was in the 90s?
Nope, you aren’t crazy. TV advertising revenues have been in the pits for months, so a lot of stations and cable channels are looking for any way to squeeze out revenues. You may have heard that several TV station groups (like Belo) were trying to charge cable companies to carry their digital signals.
Another manifestation of this is that stations are more likely to give up time for informercials. Around here our weekend access slots (before and after the 6:00 news) have almost entirely gone to infomercials, and one of our stations decided to pre-empt Regis and Kelly Live to run infomercials in its place. A few years ago it would have been unthinkable, but hey, you gotta make a buck somehow.
Not only are there more infomercials, but the lack of advertisers has driven down the price of ad time during more desirable periods, which is why a while back you’d see ads for products like the Snuggie during prime time. Washington Post article here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/26/AR2009012602327.html
Watch the Snuggie ad. Do it! I know you’ll want one! Here’s an excerpt of the article:
See, this is what I was asking about. At first I thought, “well, these are cool products. They’re made by small firms, but why shouldn’t they appear alongside all those vacuous ads for big-name garbage?” But then… I realize the problem. These ads are terrible. They’re gimmicky, cheesy, exactly what you’d expect. Why?! Why are the people behind them so clueless? Why don’t they take pointers from the big-name advertisers who know how to get people to respect them?
Our old standard TV stations, CBS, NBC, ABC run infomercials during slow viewer times. That can be near noon and early afternoon as well as late at night. Good thing we have remotes.
I recall seeing my first infomercial in 1951, when we first got a TV.
It was for Scott’s Lawn Spreader, and showed us newly lawn concious suburbanites how to deal with owning a 1/4 acre pasture.
The thing was always showing before I could watch cartoons, and I would sit there waiting for them, absorbing lawn culture indoctrination.