Telly Addicts, You Should See Them At It
I am obsessed with home shopping channels. Still. And I know home shopping channels and their “hosts” (salespeople) are such easy topics to clown on, but it’s more than that for me — I’m fascinated by them and the fact that home shopping TV channels can still exist in this day and age. I know I’m not solving the Da Vinci Code here, but let’s look at the facts:
- Everything is cheaper on the Internet. Period. The other day they were selling some no-name big-screen television for about $200 more than the first price I brought up after two seconds of Googling.
- They take advantage of the fact that grandmas the world over don’t know how to Google things.
- The cult of fandom that surrounds some of the hosts is something I want to study in a sociological context and receive a doctorate in so I can return to the university and teach it to generations to come. I have watched as people called in to various “shows” (see next bullet point) and not only gushed about the products they had previously purchased, but genuinely expressed fondness and emotion for the “hosts” (salespeople) and actually said words that we sometimes find difficult to say to people close to us in our everyday lives: “I love you.” WHOA. Whoa. Now, I’m a passionate fan of things/people, so this isn’t coming from someone who doesn’t know what it’s like to deeply appreciate something/someone; but these folks are salespeople. They sell you things. Do I think they are beneath me? Certainly not! Being a salesperson is a job, just like being a secretary or a bus driver or a bank teller or any other vocation, and good on ya for getting your bills paid. Is being a salesperson something worthy of adoration? The level of adoration that would inspire someone to gush “I LOVE YOU” to a total stranger? I say no. Some would argue that even rock stars and movie stars aren’t worthy of that level of adoration, but I can see the uniqueness of those positions inspiring that sort of reaction, because through those mediums people feel like the stars understand them and speak to them on a different level. You can be inspired by the lyrics or music a rock star wrote, or be inspired by the way an actor portrayed a character or wrote/directed a film; how are you so deeply inspired by the way the guy on TV is attempting to sell you a deluxe garden hose that you have to profess your love for him?! I see it as the equivalent of telling the guy at the Gap who helped you find khakis in your size that you love him.
- I love that half-hour (or more) blocks of simply selling similar products are framed as “shows.” “Tune in to Kitchen Madness this Thursday at 9! A whole hour of pots, pans, and the like! Don’t miss it! MUST SEE TV!”
- Again with the “host” thing — “Hello, I’m your host for this hour of Kitchen Madness!” = “Hi, I am a frying pan salesman.”
- My absolute favorite thing is that they have “shows” during which they attempt to sell perfume/shower gels/bath stuff/anything with a selling point of “This smells good.” NO ONE WATCHING CAN EXPERIENCE THE VERY REASON YOU ARE TRYING TO SELL THAT PRODUCT. It’s fun to watch the “hosts” try to come up with different ways to describe the scents of the perfumes and the textures of the lotions, but kind of a bummer to think of the people buying these things sight unseen (smell un-smelled?) only to receive them and realize they don’t like the fragrance at all.
- Almost none of these items are unique to the channel; they are almost always (99.99999999999% of the time) things that can be purchased at a number of stores local to you (I once saw colored pencils on sale. COLORED PENCILS!), and also everywhere on the Internet, so the incentive to pick up your phone and order them from TV (arguably the same amount of — or perhaps a little tiny bit more — effort it takes to open your laptop and purchase them via computer) instead of by other avenues is zero.
- These channels exist solely to grift grandmas (and it has worked on mine more than once).
