1115 The Girls of Shop TV

1115 The Girls of Shop TV

And the boys.  It’s just quaint to use the kind of headline that Playboy would when running a picture a picture feature on “the Girls of...”  (Houston) (Cape Cod) (San Diego) (Target) and such.   

There are few if any stunners among the “girls” or the “boys” who appear day in, day out for years on QVC or HSN or ShopNBC, Jewelry Television, and the dozen or so similar merchants, some of which come and go like fans of the visiting team at a middle school softball game.

Mostly, they’re normal looking next door neighbor types ranging in age from young drama students who can’t get acting jobs to middle age householder types who want a steady gig and don’t mind living in places like St. Petersburg, Florida, West Chester, PA or Eden Prairie, MN.

They are mostly attractive or at least not unattractive.  Some of them are obvious dopes, but many appear to be of normal or even above normal intelligence.

And those are the ones we’re studying today.

As in, what do they think as they tout the virtues of the latest vegetable chopping device for your kitchen... going over every little detail of this plastic thingy and trying to make it sound like the greatest invention since the founding of Levittown.

Imagine the prep.  These men and women have to psych themselves up to be enthusiastic about “today’s special value,”  which is guaranteed to make your saggy, blotchy, cowhide-like skin turn into something Cate Blanchett or Beyonce would envy.  This kind of role preparation would send Constantin Stanislavski leaping in frustration from the roof of the Bolshoi Dom in St. Petersburg.

Reality check:  You are selling stainless steel jewelry because the price of gold is out of reach and the price of silver is getting there.  You are selling oddball gemstones like Tanzanite and Tourmaline and quartz because traditional stones are going the way of gold and silver.

You (and Wolfgang and Emeril) are selling kitchen appliances customers will buy, use once and store away never to be seen again.  

You are selling handbags, mock Tiffany lamps, bras, and shoes that the manufacturers can’t get rid of elsewise.   And you’re doing it with gusto and a smile that would be the envy of a carnival barker or the auctioneer on “Storage Wars.”

And all the while you’re probably thinking of hitting the bar after work where you can describe your customers as suckerfish with credit cards.

Shrapnel (Twitter edition):

--Mayor Mike is a regular on Twitter.  And it sounds like he writes the stuff himself.  Be nice if more public officials joined in and tried to connect with their constituents personally and directly instead of through layers of flunkies.

--Rupert Murdoch is a regular on Twitter.  And it sounds like he writes the stuff himself.  Murdoch’s easy to dismiss as a right wing nutjob, but he isn’t …  he’s a smart guy with a lot of insight and worth reading.

--The Associated Press is a regular on Twitter, and we know they write their own stuff.  Often, the tweets are available sooner than any website that forwards its news.  And so far, they seem not only fast, but accurate.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012