Damn infomercials

[Dis]

What's the point of these, do people actually buy these crappy products?

Who in the hell would watch a 30 minute commercial?

Yes I'm annoyed I could not find a single thing on my cable tv at 4:30 AM. . Seriously, with all these infomercials on every single station, how could any one make any money?

Luckily I did find an old movie on AMC worth watching- Easy Rider.

But what is the point of having tv stations run 24 hours if they aren't going to put programming on all 24 hours? Perhaps I need to stop staying up till 4:30 in the morning...

[Zkribbler]

Shopoholics will buy anything.

The point of running these crap shows at 4 in the morning is that (a) the studio gets money to run them whereas if it closed down, it would make no money and (b) the purchasing of these products by idiots more pays for the shows.

The answers:
Watching DVDs.
Posting on Poly.

[Dis]

no one posts on here at 4 in the morning

[Zkribbler]

It's 8 in the evening in the Philippines (Lancer) and in Singapore (Rufus T. Firefly).

Apolyton: The 24/7 Spam Channel.

[Ninot]

The stations near me used to always run "TimeWarner Presents Best of the 80s!" informercials, hosted by some nobody or Regis Philbin if it was a 50s special. I loved those. The music helped me sleep.

Now its all this stuff about how to be successful. I clearly don't need that, I live at home and stay up at late watching infomercials, duh.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
Watching DVDs.

90% of the time my TV is now used as a projector for the dvd player or the pc...

[Apocalypse]

About 10 years ago, Apple ran a infomercial about a Hispanic family that got a Mac and their lives were made much better. It was actually fairly well written and interesting except that schools had switched to PCs by then so much of their argument for Macs was meh.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Fun fact: You can blame Reagan for infomercials. It's true!

Prior to the Reagan administration, the FCC regulated the ratio of advertising to programming on broadcast television -- there was a fixed maximum percentage of time in any given hour that could be alloted to commercials. With such regulations in place, it simply became unprofitable to keep broadcasting after a certain hour, which is why stations chose to sign off instead.

(This is a ritual I kind of miss, actually: the National Anthem playing over cheesy images of the American landscape -- often immediately preceded by a 3-5 minute "inspirational message," purchased by some church at the only hour it could afford. It was like TV itself saying, "For God's sake, it's 4 am; pray for some guidance in your clearly empty life, and get some sleep already!")

Anyway, part of the Reagan adminsitration's broad deregulation efforts focused on gutting FCC regulations, including this one. Any notion that there should be a maximum percentage of airtime devoted to ads was simply eliminated, effectively allowing 100% of any given timeslot to be advertising. The informercial was born almost immediately thereafter; not suprisingly, its first practitioners were the same advertisiers who used to by ad time in the wee small hours, especially Ron Popeil's craptastic product company, Ronco.

Just thought y'all might be interested in the history there. Now I have to get back to applying my aerosol hair.

[MarkG]

informative posts
thanks Rufus

can we have a "Most Usefull OT Post Of The Week"(MUOTPOTW) vote, please?

[b etor]

infomercials are so much fun to watch! like the füri ozitech knife sharpener with the DIAMOND edges that when you put the knife through it ALWAYS stays at a 20 degree angle. LOL. the knife slices through the toughest test!! THE RIPE TOMAHTO!!

http://www.ozitech.com/

i saw that like 5 times when i was at my friend's house at 3am. he could recite the commercial by heart. it's only 2 minutes. watch it!!

my dad used to buy a ton of stuff from QVC. thankfully, we don't get that station anymore.

[germanos]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Just thought y'all might be interested in the history there. Now I have to get back to applying my aerosol hair.

rufus


b etor: that's a sick add
especially when the guy sharpens his knive on the iron the wrong way (towards his hands, instead of away from them)

[Imran Siddiqui]

Oh yeah, some of those informercials are fun. I always liked the Showtime Rotissere ("Set It and Forget It!"). And I do have the Magic Bullet (though from a store, not calling up and ordering).

[Dis]

Originally posted by b etor
infomercials are so much fun to watch! like the füri ozitech knife sharpener with the DIAMOND edges that when you put the knife through it ALWAYS stays at a 20 degree angle. LOL. the knife slices through the toughest test!! THE RIPE TOMAHTO!!

http://www.ozitech.com/

i saw that like 5 times when i was at my friend's house at 3am. he could recite the commercial by heart. it's only 2 minutes. watch it!!

my dad used to buy a ton of stuff from QVC. thankfully, we don't get that station anymore.

It's good you were doing wholesome stuff like watching tv rather than doing drugs, alcohol, or sex.