Discount Hypnosis : Shopping by TV Becomes New Mania

Jane McElveen had seen bargains on TV before, but this one lit up her life like flares in the night.

Budget Bob from the Home Shopping Network was selling miniature figurines by Limoges. Heavens, some of them were only $8.75!

And it was new stuff, too--tiny porcelain shoes and a sewing machine and a grand piano. A feeling came over her a little like madness and a lot like rapture.

She looked over at Duncan, her cockateel. His cage hangs near the display cases where Jane keeps her figurines. That’s dirt cheap for Limoges, Jane said out loud.

Then she began dialing Home Shopping’s toll-free number, ordering 10, 15, 20 items. Who can remember? It was mania.

‘Best $300 I Ever Spent’

To this day, Jane--single and 56--cherishes that one special night. “It was the best $300 I ever spent,” she said.

Such is the grip of home shopping fever. And what Jane McElveen of Clearwater, Fla., has long known, much of America is finding out. Discount shopping shows--hypnotic as a price tag 50% off list--are spreading wholesale across cable TV.

Most often, the shows are run by perky hosts who breathlessly present marked-down goods as if each item had just been excavated from a pharaoh’s tomb. First they give a retail price, then they slash it down to tempting size. Anyone with a credit card or a checkbook can order.

By September, these shows are expected to reach 20 million cable-equipped homes. Some already are broadcast daily, non-stop. The never-ending sales may be the biggest advance in shopping since the mall.

Quits Going to Stores

“I’ve quit going to stores,” said Mary Bowman, 64, a nurse in St. Petersburg Beach, Fla. “I mean, who needs them?”

Mary first discovered the around-the-clock Home Shopping Network last month. What is all this gibberish on Channel 2, she wanted to know.

Thirty minutes later, she bought a ruby-and-sapphire cross, valued by the show at $275 and knocked down to $96. Ten minutes after that, she bit for the seven small gemstones on a gold chain: retail $100, wholesale $30.

Then she bought a gold-plated cuspidor for her brother-in-law Dale, a talking clock for her brother Fred, a diamond ring for her daughter Vicki and a porcelain bouquet centerpiece for the dining room table.

“You can see a fingerprint where the man hand-painted a flower,” said Mary, a widow, while showing it off.

She bought a radio, a ceiling fan, four more pieces of porcelain, a set of white glass jars, three tapestry handbags, a seven-piece cookware set and a fishing kit.

Regrettably, she and Vicki waffled too long about a silver chain with an Indian-head nickel painted in acrylic. At $29.95, the deal quickly sold out.

But as luck would have it, more became available the next morning at 6:30. Vicki saw them on TV while dressing for work, and this time she did not flinch.

“It all comes with an appraisal,” she said.

One day, the Home Shopping operator even transferred Mary’s call to the host. She was on-the-air live with Budget Bob himself.

“Hi, Mary!” said Bob, who is her favorite. “How long have you been watching us?”

“About $2,000 worth,” Mary replied.

First It Was Teen-Agers

Cable TV has brought on addictions like this before. Teen-agers stare at MTV for hours, rapt in hopes of seeing a favorite band meld their music into a video dream world.

But with home shopping shows it is adults who are hooked. They await a great price for a hand-painted soup tureen or an ultrasonic insect repeller.

Few understand the lure of it all any better than Roy M. Speer, chairman of Home Shopping Network, based here in Clearwater:

“Remember when your mother had a pot-bellied radio and she kept it going all day while she did housework? Well, this is the new pot-bellied radio.”

A home shopping show is like a cut-rate home companion.

Last year, HSN became the first of them to go national. The largest as well, it reaches about 8 million homes in areas that include Long Beach, Torrance, Costa Mesa and Van Nuys.

Sales Exceed $500,000 Daily

In the last nine months, more than 350,000 people have bought merchandise, on the average purchasing 17 items at $32 apiece, according to the company. Sales exceed $500,000 a day.

Usually, the bargains are presented in no predictable order. A home computer may follow a leather handbag, then a 17-piece demitasse set with a musical pitcher that plays the theme from “Love Story.”

Some of the goods, especially the jewelry, are made for HSN. Most of the rest are closeouts and overstock.

Delivery by United Parcel is promised in seven to 10 days. There is a 30-day policy on returns.

“We sell as cheap as possible,” Speer said. “If it’s on the air, people know it’s a bargain. Impulse does the rest.”

Others Rushing In

More than a dozen other outfits are trying to tap the home shopping market. They are planning shows--or are already airing them in limited time slots.

Air time is the TV equivalent of shelf space. Shopping shows deal for it with local cable operators, who get a share of the profits in return. The scramble now is to sign cable companies to long-term contracts.

“In the next few years, we’re going to see a battle of the shopping networks, playing out market by market,” said Thomas Rauh, a retailing consultant for the accounting firm Touche Ross.

HSN’s main rival appears to be the Cable Value Network, a cooperative venture between C.O.M.B. Co. (Close Out Merchandise Buyers), of Minneapolis, and several large cable operators themselves.

Will Reach 12 Million Homes

By Sept. 1, CVN will be on the air all day in 12 million homes, according to Peter Barton, of Denver-based Tele-Communications Inc., one of those cable companies.

Many retail analysts believe the shopping shows--suggestive though they are of old-fashioned auctions--presage times ahead when more buying will be done at home, using computers and TVs.

“No one is sure what the technologies will be, but by the mid or late ‘90s, one-third to one-quarter of all purchases will be done away from the store,” said Stuart Robbins, of the brokerage firm of Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette. “The television will be just another shopping mall.”

Wall Street investors like the idea. Almost any company with plans for a home shopping show has found its stock on a romp.

Stock Is Hot New Issue

When HSN went public May 13, it quickly skipped from $18 a share to more than $100 before tumbling back to the $70s. It was one of the hottest new issues ever.

Of course, Jane McElveen--and plenty of others around here--could have told the sharpie stockbrokers that this was coming. They were stuck on Home Shopping when it was just a baby of an idea, an invisible voice on the radio.

Back in 1977, Roy Speer and his partner, Lowell W. Paxson, owned a Clearwater AM-radio station. When they had trouble selling ad time, they decided to pitch their own goods instead of someone else’s.

Jane remembered: “You’d have bought something at a department store and then hear the next day they were selling the very same thing at half the price. It would almost make you die.”

In 1982, when Clearwater got cable, Speer and Paxson brought their shopping show to local TV. In time, Speer said, they had sold something to 74% of the households wired for the program.

Ready, Willing and Cabled

Finally, last year, they went national, and they have found a country of Jane McElveens ready, willing and cabled.

To many, regular TV does not hold much interest, anyway. The news is full of the same faces night after night and the weather makes itself known soon enough as is and those so-called dramas always end up in the bedroom.

Who needs to see that? Better to cozy up on the couch and shop--as Budget Bob says--in the comfort, convenience and safety of your own home.

“Why people would hop a bus to shop in a mall I’ll never know,” said Jane, who manages an apartment complex. “I haven’t been to the mall in three years.”

Without the mall, Jane has managed to buy gold jewelry for Aunt Bertha, fishing gear for Cousin Kevin, perfume for Cousin Dorothy, every dinner plate she saw with a painting by Norman Rockwell and all those hundreds of figurines in the glass cases beside Duncan the cockateel.

Happy to Contradict

“People say, Jane, we saw this downtown and it must have cost you a fortune, and I say, oh no, it didn’t,” she said.

Jane turns on Home Shopping first thing in the morning. She dozes off with it at night. If she has insomnia, she can count on it being there.

But the best time of all is noon to 4 p.m., prime time for HSN, when Budget Bob Circosta is the host. If Home Shopping has a celebrity, it is this man with neat curly hair and boyish face.

Jane met him once, though she does not think Budget Bob would remember. She agrees with those women who say he is the best thing since panty hose.

“He’s very dear to me because I’ve bought so many wonderful things from him over the years,” she said.

Veteran Pitchman

Circosta, 36, is a veteran pitchman who was once the voice of Neutrogena soap. He has the studied on-air politeness of a high school class president.

Five years ago, the shopping show started him out on radio as Marshal Bob, shooting down the prices. Then Budget Bob caught on better.

Clearly, many women would love to stroll with him beyond the forest to where the wild river meets the still water--or at least to a factory wholesale outlet.

“Oh, I get my share of marriage proposals,” Budget Bob said modestly. “But I think most of the ladies feel I’m the son they’ve never had.”

Like everyone at HSN, Circosta insists that the merchandise is the star of the show and the hosts are just window dressing.

Sits Like News Anchorman

On the air, his job is to sit like a news anchorman before an American flag, keeping up the chatter. He introduces an item, startles himself with the incredible sale price and keeps an eye on how many orders are coming in.

A computer screen flashes the number of busy phone lines and tracks dollar volume per minute. He moves on when sales slow down or an item sells out.

Most importantly, he fields calls from some of the people placing orders. Happy customers can do more to sell a Seiko pocket color TV--valued by HSN at $514, priced at $185--than any host.

“I’ve got one sitting in my lap,” said Jeannine of Garden City, Mich.

“You have one already?” Budget Bob asked.

“Sure, they’re wonderful. I’m watching you and the soap opera.”

Fulfills Futurists’ Prediction

In a way, this is what futurists predicted for cable TV years ago. Average folks would talk to each other across an expanded video sphere. TV would become the great instrument of democracy.

Of course, they did not foresee a home shopping craze or divine how the satellite-conveyed beams would fill with people gabbing of their need for an ultrasonic insect repeller.

“Every day you learn something new,” Mary Bowman observed. “You realize that people in California have bugs, people in Washington have bugs. Really, people are the same the world over.”

But no one, no how was going to persuade Mary to buy that Capodimonte jar shining at her through her TV--useful as it obviously was, with little porcelain legs and a large purple rose on the lid.

‘Enough Is Enough’

“I’ve already bought five Capodimontes, and enough is enough,” Mary said firmly.

And, truth be told, she did not weaken until she got home from work the next day, when they came on with a cute vase, only 14 inches high and perfect for the bedroom.

“I couldn’t pass that little baby up,” she confessed, explaining further:

“It has a red and yellow flower, and it isn’t so rococo, like some of them.”