Chapter 8

But Wait, There’s More!

Seriously, does direct-response TV have to suck?

THE DARK AGES PRODUCED A THING called the Iron Maiden—a coffin with spikes on the inside that slowly skewered the victim as its lid was closed. Yet even the Dark Ages—that period of superstitious insanity and violence—never came up with a torture as horrifying as Suzanne Somers telling me about all the great benefits of the ThighMaster.

The direct-response TV (DRTV) part of our industry has traditionally produced some of the most horrible blather in the history of television: Richard Simmons and his Deal-A-Meal cards; the old lady in the First Alert spots who said, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”; and most recently, the plague of ab workout machines—the Ab-Ripper, the Ab-inator, the Ab-Whatever. George Orwell must’ve foreseen the state of modern infomercials when he referred to advertising as “the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.”