LUCINSKI: Informercials: A video art form

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October 22, 2008

Anonymous The Tonawanda News Wed Oct 22, 2008, 01:00 AM EDT

It was another Saturday night without much to do. Seven p.m. on a Saturday evening is something of a dead zone when it comes to TV. The early college football games were over and the late ones had yet to start. Sure, there was the 25th airing of a “King of Queens” episode on WNLO, CW-23 (Time Warner customers, that’s what you’re missing). But we’d already seen it 24 times.

What’s left? Surfing the channels, as limited as we are without cable or satellite service, there wasn’t much. Then, magic.

There he was, 61-year old Jon “Bowzer” Bauman. He was the lead clown of the late ’60s-’70s musical group known as “Sha Na Na” that played songs from the early days of rock and roll. I’ll admit it: Bowzer got my attention.

Bowzer and old-time rock and roll (always a sucker for that) might have been the hook. But it got the thought process started about how the folks who try to sell us stuff on TV actually pull it off. Yes, we’re talking about the infomercial.

The age of the infomercial began in 1984 when the Federal Communication Commission repealed regulations on the amount of commercial time television stations could broadcast each hour. It had been 18 minutes, far too little for even a 30-minute infomercial each hour. But with the restrictions lifted, we were soon treated to endless praise of Popeil’s Pocket Fisherman, Jack LaLanne’s Juicer and that stuff you sprayed on your bald spot to cover it up.

Anyhow, Bowzer’s infomercial capitalized on his greasy music background. He was pitching Time-Life’s Oldies But Goodies music collection.

That’s one of basics of the informercial. Get either an expert or a celebrity (if you can find one person who embodies both, such as Bowzer, you’ve struck gold) to front the thing.

Another basic: Find an attractive member of the opposite sex to play along in the sales pitch. In this case, it was a pleasant woman named Julie Lancaster. She’s not a kid, but it’s clear she wasn’t even born when most of the music she was selling was popular. Doesn’t matter. Bowzer is the guy who gets the props for being a legitimate greaser; Julie coos and oohs and ahs and dances with him and thinks what fun it must have been to listen to all this great music at the malt shop or the drive-in restaurant.

You see the same kind of thing on the informercial that sells the grill that makes pocket sandwiches. The woman is the expert and clearly knows her way around the kitchen. The guy is kind of window dressing who doesn’t know much at all about how to prepare food. He does, however, know how to eat and is very enthusiastic about that. It works. My wife wants one; the grill, not the guy (I think), for Christmas.

But back to Bowzer and his infomercial. It followed a pattern that is familiar to most long-form advertisements. Demonstrate the product for eight minutes. In this case, it means playing clips from the songs and showing black-and-white video of the artists. Then, run a 90-second commercial for it. Repeat the cycle two times. That does two things: It beats the message into one’s head if you sit there for the full half-hour.

As long as there’s cable TV or airtime to fill at 3 a.m. or 7 p.m. on a Saturday evening, the infomercial will be there. Will it be enough to convince old-time rock and rollers to cough up “five easy payments of $29.99” for 158 songs on CD from the ’50s? That might be the informercial’s greatest challenge of them all.

Dick Lucinski is the managing editor of the Niagara Gazette.

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