It's Amazing! Call Now!

By Richard Zoglin

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!

With reporting by Thomas McCarroll/New York