Infomercial offenders -- who's the worst in your market?

[anotherguyTN]

I agree with the idea of infomercials being banned from cable TV, and I'd also be for banning them from local TV, but if that can't happen, I'd be for the following FCC regulations on infomercials:

They can be no more than 25% of the daily schedule (Or possibly even less - the lower the better.)

They can only be at regularly scheduled times for nothing but infomercials. (Hopefully late night only)

Local stations would not be allowed to pre-empt regular programming for infomercials, regardless of the time of day it comes on.

 

[Bongwater]

Whatever happened to the simple :60 TV spot where in one minute, you got the basic run-down of whatever this product can do ("It slices! It dices! It's strong enough to hold this man suspended in mid-air and it even plays your MP3 collection. But WAIT! THERE'S MORE! You also get....")

The remaining :59 minutes of these hour long infomercials are filled with more blabber and gushing by paid amatuer actors.

What's with that Don Lapre guy, who could stare you hypnotically in the face without blinking for MINUTES and tell you how he made his millions (by exploiting desperate folks out of their hard earned money?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Lapre

Or those real estate midgets? (The yellow brick road to prosperity starts somewhere I guess...)

A lot of these infomercials are by quacks - especially those offering vitamins or "male enhancement" pills. It's bad enough you even have to hear about those on the RADIO.

Remember another Ron Popiel product, GLH (for "Great Looking Hair") a spray on stuff you put on your balding scalp to, well, at least tone down the shine....

http://www.asseenontv.com/prod-pages/glhmb.htm

(Just don't get caught in the rain. Or sweat....)

It's stuff like all this that give informercials a bad name. And why they should be banned. For every one GOOD product out there, there are dozens of scams. And most of the good products end up in stores anyway to FAR GREATER success than just through the infomercials alone. For example, the George Foreman grill is now a kitchen staple and available everywhere for cheap. And it is a GOOD product-I still love mine, and its easy availability in stores is what made it happen, not the infomercial alone. The Bedazzler is another and now the Magic Bullet is on sale at Target. It's when people actually see this stuff in actual retail stores with return policies that the general skepticism begins to disappear and they warm up to them. Plus you don't have to pay for shipping & handling....

 

[DToTheJ]

I'm surprised none of you guys mentioned Buffalo - their channels 2,4 and 7 air so many infos on the overnight, it's insane! (Or at least it was that way a few years ago.)

 

[ShawnHill1]

I agree with the idea of infomercials being banned from cable TV, and I'd also be for banning them from local TV, but if that can't happen, I'd be for the following FCC regulations on infomercials:

They can be no more than 25% of the daily schedule (Or possibly even less - the lower the better.)

They can only be at regularly scheduled times for nothing but infomercials. (Hopefully late night only)

Local stations would not be allowed to pre-empt regular programming for infomercials, regardless of the time of day it comes on.

Someone needs to tell DirecTV this too. They have SEVERAL channels exclusively for informercials (at least five or six by my count), where that bandwith can be freed up for other networks that they could carry.

 

[naytchrboy]

WLFL in Raleigh starts the CW Saturday morning cartoon block at 5 a.m. and it's over by 10 a.m. so that infomercials can take over until after lunch. How many kids are up to watch Scooby-Doo and Tom and Jerry at 5 or 6 a.m. on a Saturday?

Same thing in Baltimore on WNUV.

I gather WNUV is owned by Sinclair (as is WLFL).

 

[TheRob]

I once checked the overnight ratings to see what our one hour of paid programming overnight brought in.  We actually won the time slot with a 2.0, beating paid programming on a few other stations, Up To the Minute, and reruns of Conan O'Brien. 

 

[EricStein]

I once checked the overnight ratings to see what our one hour of paid programming overnight brought in. We actually won the time slot with a 2.0, beating paid programming on a few other stations, Up To the Minute, and reruns of Conan O'Brien.

I can imagine, if your station is a powerhouse sign-on to sign-off (like WWL-TV New Orleans or WHIO-TV Dayton for example), infomercials may win time slots on these stations. Even static may get better ratings for them!

 

[NHRadio]

There would be serious First Amendment issues if anyone tried to regulate infomercials on local stations...besides, the FCC doesn't regulate programming decisions because it doesn't have the authority. As to the banning of infomercials from cable/satellite, not only do you have that pesky 1st Amendment again, but one could argue that without them your cable/satellite bill would be higher than it is now. As a friend in the TV biz once told me "I don't give a sh-t who watches them...as long as their checks clear they're welcome".

I agree with the idea of infomercials being banned from cable TV, and I'd also be for banning them from local TV, but if that can't happen, I'd be for the following FCC regulations on infomercials:

They can be no more than 25% of the daily schedule (Or possibly even less - the lower the better.)

They can only be at regularly scheduled times for nothing but infomercials. (Hopefully late night only)

Local stations would not be allowed to pre-empt regular programming for infomercials, regardless of the time of day it comes on.

Someone needs to tell DirecTV this too. They have SEVERAL channels exclusively for informercials (at least five or six by my count), where that bandwith can be freed up for other networks that they could carry.

 

[azumanga]

There would be serious First Amendment issues if anyone tried to regulate infomercials on local stations...besides, the FCC doesn't regulate programming decisions because it doesn't have the authority.

Then what was the rationale behind the loosening of commercial restrictions in 1984, which led to the boom of infomercials? When those restrictions were loosened, they practically opened a Pandora's Box -- the effects weren't felt right away, but by the late-1990s, there were more ads and "clutter" on TV, and infomercials ruled the late-night -- a domain previously ruled by reruns, movies, and of course, "snow".

 

[NHRadio]

If you want my semi-educated opinion, the rules were loosened because the FCC knew it didn't have a legal leg to stand on re: commercial restrictions and rewrote the rules before they were sued over them, where they would have almost certainly lost. There is a world of legal difference between requiring X hours of E/I programming "in the public interest" (which we all know is a joke) and telling stations they can't run that kind of advertising. You could make an argument that infomercials are in the public interest as they tell consumers about new products in the marketplace and supposedly save them money vs. buying in a store as well as allowing stations the ability to invest those dollars into more local programming. Not that I'd buy it, but it's a decent legal position in that you can't actually disprove it.



Then what was the rationale behind the loosening of commercial restrictions in 1984, which led to the boom of infomercials? When those restrictions were loosened, they practically opened a Pandora's Box -- the effects weren't felt right away, but by the late-1990s, there were more ads and "clutter" on TV, and infomercials ruled the late-night -- a domain previously ruled by reruns, movies, and of course, "snow".
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[DToTheJ]

I once checked the overnight ratings to see what our one hour of paid programming overnight brought in. We actually won the time slot with a 2.0, beating paid programming on a few other stations, Up To the Minute, and reruns of Conan O'Brien.

With all due respect, think a great portion of those viewers fell asleep with the TV on?

 

[bhayes1016]

I once checked the overnight ratings to see what our one hour of paid programming overnight brought in. We actually won the time slot with a 2.0, beating paid programming on a few other stations, Up To the Minute, and reruns of Conan O'Brien.

With all due respect, think a great portion of those viewers fell asleep with the TV on?

A lot of people do leave the TV on at night, as background noise.

 

[quadraphonic]

I will admit that I dig a good infomercial the first couple of times.
Don Lapre, Erik Estrada, any of Popeil's masterworks, the chefs who make knives, even the Oxy-Clean guy.
But after about five or six....not so much.

Our local My Network and CW stations run them from 7:30-10am a lot, then they start them up again after midnight.
After midnight, even the affiliates will get in on that action.
I never get how they run a couple of infomercials, then they run a couple of sitcoms, then they go back to infomercials though.
That seems like sticking a stick in the viewer's eye.
I'll have to check the schedules to see how it actually works out per hour/per day/per week, but I know I have to watch around some infomercials to see some "Scrubs" at 3 am, and used to have to watch "Drew Carey" like that.....