Advertising’s Amazing Discovery

The info-mercial boom is due in part to a 1982 antitrust ruling against the National Assn. of Broadcasters. In 1983, the NAB dissolved a 30-year-old code, voluntarily obeyed by most broadcasters, which limited the number of commercial minutes a station could air per hour.

Info-mercials-commercials that look like news or talk shows-rushed in to fill the void and now account for as much as 50% of local programming, said Assistant Prof. Rader Hayes of the University of Wisisnsin’s department of consumer science.

One reason for their popularity among advertisers is that info-mercials are a relative bargain.

Gerald Baldwin, vice president and media director of Synchronal Corp., a New York-based company that produces info-mercials and places them on the air, said prices can run from R$200 to as high as $30,000 per half hour, depending on the station, the time of day and the audience the station would deliver.”

By comparison, a 30-second commercial on prime-time network television averages $100,000.

Although stations are tight-lipped about paid programming-- (“You’re hitting a nerve people will be resistant to discuss,” a spokesperson for cable’s WOR said)-those on the advertising side see info-mercials as a necessary source of income. “A lot of stations need this type of revenue to survive,” said Don Gautereaux, media buyer for Project Media in Woodland Hills.

Info-mercials are “definitely profitable for the buyers because they keep buying the time,” said cable television analyss Larry Gerbrandt of the Carmel firm of Paul Kagan Associates. “With these shows, if it doesn’t work, it gets yanked.”