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Do Other Nations Have Infomercials?
- Thread starter Markxxx
- Start date
Mark said:
In the UK, yes. We call them 'teleshopping'. There are both channels showing just infomercials (such as QVC) and informercials shown overnight on mainstream channels. ITV isn't allowed to show infomercials on its main ITV 1 channel (historic thing-see below) but can do (and does) on ITV 2,3 and 4.
Interestingly ITV carried infomercials in its very early days http://www.whirligig-tv.co.uk/tv/adults/other/jimsinn.htm but the government soon clamped down on this. In the 1980s and 1990s informercials made a come back on satellite and cable and with the switch to digital they are allowed on over-the-air telly too.
However the ban remains on ITV, channel four and (I think) channel 5. The BBC obviously don't show infomercials either.
In Latin America the answer is YES. They actually show the same informercial in multiple countries and run a rotating graphic with a phone number in each country (accompanied by that country's flag) that you can call to buy the product. Many are the same infomercials that you see in the US; only dubbed into Spanish.
I've also seen infomercials in Japan, which are absolutely (and unintentionally) hilarious! They hosts show off the features to an audience, which oooohs and aaaaahs like crazy over each one. Then the ("fantastic") price comes out and everyone cheers as if someone scored a goal! You have to see it to believe it!
There were tons of them during weekends when I was there.
I've also seen infomercials in Japan, which are absolutely (and unintentionally) hilarious! They hosts show off the features to an audience, which oooohs and aaaaahs like crazy over each one. Then the ("fantastic") price comes out and everyone cheers as if someone scored a goal! You have to see it to believe it!
There were tons of them during weekends when I was there.
Infomercials are approximately the same thing as home-shopping. The difference is in the presentation. Infomercials are typically 28 minutes long, and filled with pushy sales people doing demonstrations with the product, testimonials of past customers, an expert endorsement, and "BUT wait, there's more!" offers.
Home shopping is long-form theme sales pitches. You might see two hours blocks of fashion accessories. Typically these are presented with a host employed by the home shopping channel and a representative of the company whose products are being sold (often the inventor.)
Generally home shopping channels are better-regarded than infomercials because they sell products which are more likely to be useful and less likely to fail (like clothing).
Home shopping is long-form theme sales pitches. You might see two hours blocks of fashion accessories. Typically these are presented with a host employed by the home shopping channel and a representative of the company whose products are being sold (often the inventor.)
Generally home shopping channels are better-regarded than infomercials because they sell products which are more likely to be useful and less likely to fail (like clothing).
I think you get both types in the UK. However a lot of the blocks are broadcast in the early hours of the morning so I haven't seen much of them. QVC is definatley home shopping, although from your description I'm not sure there is a vast difference?
Just googling around tells me we now have a block on ITV1 called 'the zone' which is Home shopping/teleshopping/call it what you will. That makes my earlier post wrong as for years ITV was not allowed to show shopping segments.
Honestly, the regulations are falling like dominoes in the UK at the minute! I can't keep up! I was going to say 'but paid for religious programming blocks are still banned in the UK'. I'm not now sure if even that is the case.
Just googling around tells me we now have a block on ITV1 called 'the zone' which is Home shopping/teleshopping/call it what you will. That makes my earlier post wrong as for years ITV was not allowed to show shopping segments.
Honestly, the regulations are falling like dominoes in the UK at the minute! I can't keep up! I was going to say 'but paid for religious programming blocks are still banned in the UK'. I'm not now sure if even that is the case.
BRNout said:
And now DirecTV even has its own 24-hour infomercial channel called "Hogar Shopping Club". The crazy thing is, that if you're (un)lucky enough, you'll actually find the same infomercial in at least 4 channels at the same time.
They definitely have them in Mexico - I saw XEW-2 on a Saturday night and they had them after 1 AM. Most of the other major stations in Mexico City had them at that hour as well as I recall.
In talking off-list with the guy behind the TelevisionAU site, he tells me that Australia does as well, mainly running the crappy US ones. North of the border, we get mainly the American ones on the anglo channels, while the French-language channels have more variety (sort of...TVA mainly runs VOed US infomercials, while V runs locally-produced ones for psychic lines and online sex shops ;D).
F
FreddyE1977
Guest
We have infomercials in Soviet Union. They run 24 hours a day and
tell you that you WILL buy Party line.
(with apologies to Yakov Smirnoff)
tell you that you WILL buy Party line.
(with apologies to Yakov Smirnoff)
This site http://www.digital-advertising.co.uk/index.html may be of interest to the OP. It tells you pretty much everything you could wish to know about UK infomercials
That's pretty good. I bet many people in America would welcome such restriction ;DThe website BMR showed us said:
Eduardo said:
LOL. Do bear in mind that before 2009 many channels weren't allowed to show informercials at all, so this was hardly a 'restriction' so much as the lifting of one!
I would place no confidence at all in that restriction not being lifted further at some future point in time.....the three keywords of British broadcasting over the past decade have been 'deregulate', 'deregulate' and 'deregulate'
Anyway, that's the UK done to death- what about the rest of the world?
The old "Amazing Discoveries" infomercials (hosted by the late Mike Levey) in the '80s to early '90s were seen around the world; a few episodes are on YouTube but, unfortunately, in Dutch.
In the U.S. 20+ years ago, most stations with any sort of reputation, TV and radio, subscribed to a voluntary code that limited commercials per hour to between 15 and 20 minutes. Obviously if you run an infomercial, it's taking up the entire half hour. So we really didn't have infomercials till 15 or 20 years ago. When they first went on TV they were so novel that TV Guide put them in the listings as "Program Commercial."
In Canada there was some regulation that required TV shopping and infomercials to be shown not as a moving picture but as a series of still photos. I remember seeing this in both English and French. I remember seeing the woman, Kathy Something, with the grill on Canadian TV. The audio track was the same as in the U.S. but we only saw her in still photos, one every few seconds, demonstrating the grill to her co-host. The same with the French Canadian Shopping Channel. It was a series of still photos every few seconds, even though it was broadcast live. The audio was continuous but the video was a series of still images.
At first U.S. TV informercials were designed to appear to be a real TV show that you may have just stumbled upon. They often had quality sets, studio audiences, etc. so that you thought it was a real show like Oprah or The Doctors, but it happened to be featuring a specific product. Radio infomercials continue to do the same thing today, appearing to take phone calls at random, even though they're prerecorded and the callers have been set up in advance to sing the praises of the product being advertised.
Some infomercials on TV are fairly well produced. I'm thinking about Time-Life music infomercials for "Love Songs of the 70s" or TV show infomercials advertising the old Dean Martin and Carol Burnett shows. I think I'd rather watch those late at night than Jimmy Fallon. The one for the Magic Bullet appears to be a group of friends who stayed over at Mick & Mimi's house after a party the night before. They gather in the couple's kitchen for breakfast that morning and they are introduced to the Magic Bullet.
Home shopping channels came first on cable, then on UHF TV stations that were failing at regular programming. I believe HSN was first, followed by QVC followed by Shop NBC. (There were some lesser ones but those are the three that are on nearly all cable systems today.) For awhile HSN and QVC were so popular that their parent company spun off secondary channels, HSN 2 and Q 2. A friend of mine was a presenter on Q 2. It was supposed to be hipper and younger, with products that young adults with good jobs would want, higher-end electronics, etc. The secondary channels didn't generate enough viewers and are no more.
Gregg
[email protected]
In Canada there was some regulation that required TV shopping and infomercials to be shown not as a moving picture but as a series of still photos. I remember seeing this in both English and French. I remember seeing the woman, Kathy Something, with the grill on Canadian TV. The audio track was the same as in the U.S. but we only saw her in still photos, one every few seconds, demonstrating the grill to her co-host. The same with the French Canadian Shopping Channel. It was a series of still photos every few seconds, even though it was broadcast live. The audio was continuous but the video was a series of still images.
At first U.S. TV informercials were designed to appear to be a real TV show that you may have just stumbled upon. They often had quality sets, studio audiences, etc. so that you thought it was a real show like Oprah or The Doctors, but it happened to be featuring a specific product. Radio infomercials continue to do the same thing today, appearing to take phone calls at random, even though they're prerecorded and the callers have been set up in advance to sing the praises of the product being advertised.
Some infomercials on TV are fairly well produced. I'm thinking about Time-Life music infomercials for "Love Songs of the 70s" or TV show infomercials advertising the old Dean Martin and Carol Burnett shows. I think I'd rather watch those late at night than Jimmy Fallon. The one for the Magic Bullet appears to be a group of friends who stayed over at Mick & Mimi's house after a party the night before. They gather in the couple's kitchen for breakfast that morning and they are introduced to the Magic Bullet.
Home shopping channels came first on cable, then on UHF TV stations that were failing at regular programming. I believe HSN was first, followed by QVC followed by Shop NBC. (There were some lesser ones but those are the three that are on nearly all cable systems today.) For awhile HSN and QVC were so popular that their parent company spun off secondary channels, HSN 2 and Q 2. A friend of mine was a presenter on Q 2. It was supposed to be hipper and younger, with products that young adults with good jobs would want, higher-end electronics, etc. The secondary channels didn't generate enough viewers and are no more.
Gregg
[email protected]
Gregg said:
In the 1980s, TV Guide would actually list the name of the infomercial, in the form of "[name of program] - Commercial". It would later change to a generic "Commercial Program", then "Paid Programming", until TVG decided not to mention infomercials at all -- in other words, if a station had two regular programs with an infomercial sandwiched in, the station's regular shows would be listed, but the station would not be listed at all for the infomercial.
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