By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 26, 2004; Page F01

Last year, people sitting at home watching television spent $91 billion on products they saw on infomercials, more than the gross domestic product of New Zealand. They lapped up products that claimed to make them look prettier, get skinnier, cook tastier, grow richer, remember better and love longer.

Like everyone, infomercial customers have needs and desires. Unlike everyone, they act on them. You can find them on the Internet, which, for infomercial patrons, is a megaphone, complaint desk and Father Confessor.

On www.infomercialscams.com -- which, despite the name, also posts plaudits -- Denise writes of the AB-DOer exercise bench ($150): "My pastor's wife used it and still uses it. She went from a Size 16-18 to a Size 2. Yes, 2."

Elise, on the other hand, ordered the Igia Pore Cleanzer ($30): "I have blackheads and I believed the infomercial description of this product. The instructions said that if you have trouble you should use it after a long bath or shower when the pores will be open. I took a very hot bath for one hour and I still didn't suck anything out of my skin."

The infomercial turns 20 this year, an occasion that most people probably are as eager to mark as the 30-year anniversary of the invention of the leisure suit or the centennial of the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War.

Veg-O-Matic daddy Ron Popeil, also responsible for the Pocket Fisherman, first bought 60-second television commercials in the 1950s and is often thought of as the father of the infomercial. But the Federal Communications Commission did not allow more than 16 minutes of advertising per hour, with two-minute spots the maximum length, until 1984.

The restriction was lifted that year, owing to the proliferation of cable stations and industry lobbying, and the 30-minute infomercial was born. Herbalife nutritional product infomercials appeared on USA Network. Soon after, Bill Guthy -- who owned a cassette-tape copying business -- met resort scion Greg Renker and the pair started an infomercial studio, Guthy-Renker. They signed up former NFL quarterback Fran Tarkenton to pitch motivational books, leading to their next client, Tony Robbins.

Robbins's "Personal Power" motivational books, tapes and seminars became a juggernaut, thanks to his infomercials, which showed him hanging with celebrities and royals, befriending children and piloting his own helicopter. The towering Robbins's mesmerizing positivism proved irresistible to buyers. (Do not look directly at him!)

Today, infomercials are a $256 billion-per-year industry (including its business-to-business component), according to the Electronic Retailing Association, the trade group of companies that sell via radio, television and the Internet. Of that figure, the association estimates that last year, consumers spent $91 billion on products advertised on 30-minute infomercials and 30- and 60-second ads that included a call to action. Example: A 30-second ad for, say, the Bowflex home gym is considered in the same category as a 30-minute Bowflex infomercial, because both include a phone number and a command to buy. This differs from a standard television commercial, such as for a Chevy truck, that simply aims to create brand recognition.

A new sort of infomercial has emerged, one that does not ask the consumer to buy something right away. Mainstream manufacturers such as Procter & Gamble are buying half-hour slots to promote their products, hoping you'll remember to buy them when you hit the stores.

But the traditional infomercial format remains the same: The commercials frequently feature a full-volume pitchman, amped up like a candidate for a tranquilizer-gun takedown (Tae Bo's Billy Blanks, Tony Little with the Gazelle exerciser, Billy Mays for OxiClean), hawking an "amazing product" accompanied by an incredulous interviewer (often a former actress).

Recent entrants into the field are infomercials for male-enhancement pills/supplements/pumps and pulleys/etc. The infomercial for the Extenze pill features a studio audience and legendary porn star Ron "The Hedgehog" Jeremy.

And boy howdy, do they rake in the dough. The infomercial for the Total Gym, which features actor Christie Brinkley and supermodel Chuck Norris (Wait: Strike that, reverse it), sold more than $1 billion worth of Total Gyms in a six-year run, the association said. Guthy-Renker grosses more than $1 billion annually, a sales figure equaled by Popeil's inventions.

The infomercial industry is growing at a clip of 10 percent per year, the association said. Each month, 250,000 infomercials air on cable and broadcast channels in the United States and Canada, said Sam Catanese, who runs Infomercial Monitoring Service Inc., which tracks where and how often infomercials air and sells Nielsen-like reports to advertisers.

May 2004 was the busiest month ever for the introduction of new infomercials, he said. Each day in May, three new infomercials hit the air.

Just take a moment to turn that over in your mind. Okay, now continue reading.

The industry is fraught with misconceptions, say those who make their living off infomercials. The perception that the average infomercial customer is an anti-social insomniac shut-in with impulse-control issues is grossly exaggerated and unfair, the industry says.

"They're you and me," said Barbara Tulipane, president of the Electronic Retailing Association, the trade group of infomercial makers. "Typically, they're multi-taskers. They're not just sitting down, glued to the TV. They're probably making dinner, they've got kids in the room studying, reading, talking."

An April study commissioned by Tulipane's association found the typical infomercial shopper is a single mother between 18 and 34 years old. The fact that she has less education than her peers who shop online, according to the study, does not prevent her from making between $50,000 and $99,000 per year.

Further, Tulipane said, she has found younger people attracted to infomercials. Over the summer, she said, her family rented a cabin in Maine and filled it with teenagers and young adults. At one point, she said, the group -- ages 17 to 22 -- sat through eight showings of the infomercial for the Magic Bullet blender.

Generally, an infomercial has to hit a 2-to-1 sales-to-cost ratio to survive, said Catanese, who also produces infomercials for advertisers. In other words, if the advertiser spends $1 million per week to air the infomercial, the product had better gross $2 million per week in sales.

It can cost an advertiser anywhere from $10,000 to more than $500,000 to produce a 30-minute infomercial, Catanese said. The infomercials of longtime pitchman Kevin Trudeau, which featured claims of curing cancer and were recently kicked off the air by the Federal Trade Commission, featured Trudeau at a desk, against a black background talking to a "scientist" who mangled medical terms. That sort of infomercial can be made for about $10,000, Catanese said.

Fitness products typically have higher production values. For instance, an infomercial for Nautilus's TreadClimber involved renting out a resort to shoot the spot and probably cost $500,000 to make, Catanese said.

After the cost of making the ad, the continuing expense comes from buying airtime to show it. Back in the early days of infomercials, when cable channels were screaming for programming to fill their gaping 24-7 schedules, airtime could be had for next to nothing. At an independently owned television station in a small market in the middle of the night, an advertiser can still get its 30-minute infomercial aired for $50, said Dan Danielson, chief executive of Mercury Media, which bought $152 million worth of airtime for infomercials last year.

After that, the prices go way up. The most-desired infomercial slots -- during the day on Saturday and Sunday, especially in the winter, when people are trapped indoors -- can run as high as $10,000 to $15,000 for one half-hour slot at a big-city station. Infomercials typically account for 3 to 5 percent of a station's total ad revenue.

But viewers are probably most likely to see infomercials on the scores of cable channels available nowadays. Those in the industry say it's another misconception that infomercials are night-grazing for the stay-awake set, but a look at the Infomercial Monitoring Service grid from midnight to 8 a.m. suggests otherwise.

Almost all CNBC's overnight programming can consist of infomercials, with other big cable channels such as FX, SciFi, Oxygen and Lifetime selling as many as half their overnight slots for infomercials. In a nifty bit of knowing-your-audience, E! entertainment channel has followed its "Wild On . . ." program, which documents young nearly-naked vacationers partying in hotspots around the world, with the infomercial for "Girls Gone Wild!," a videotape oeuvre largely devoted to recording young women pulling their shirts up/bikini tops down. (You there, on the sofa -- put down that phone and ask a real girl out! No, not now! It's 2 a.m.!)

Thirty-minute time slots in the weekend daytime hours on a popular cable channel such as Lifetime can cost as much as $40,000 per shot because they are reaching millions of viewers, Danielson said. Like broadcast stations, cable networks count on infomercial revenue for about 5 percent of their total ad dollars. Danielson said some stations recently have backed off selling time to infomercials.

"Stations are more wary now because of some of the bad things that have happened," he said. "But it's a cyclical business. There's a backlash, then that'll wear away after a while."

The proliferation of infomercials naturally means there is a greater chance for scoundrels in the field.

In the early '90s, when Congress was threatening to crack down on fraudulent infomercials, Renker testified before a congressional subcommittee and established the aforementioned Electronic Retailing Association, which promised self-policing in exchange for keeping lawmakers at bay.

Earlier this year, the association began another self-regulatory process, working with an ombudsman at the National Advertising Review Council who reviews infomercials and their claims. When the ombudsman targets what he thinks is a specious infomercial, he passes it along to the association, which works with the company to get it to clean up its act. If the company refuses, the association passes the company to the FTC, which may investigate.

"There have been bad marketers on the air that unfortunately give everyone a bad name," Tulipane said. "The goal is to quickly get those people off the air so the good companies can rise to the top."

The association recently targeted Ultimate HGH, a dietary supplement made by Great American Products Inc. The infomercial says HGH could "reverse the aging process," a claim the ombudsman said defies credulity, not to mention entropy, and raises even larger metaphysical and theological questions.

American Products, hoping to keep its Colonel Sanders-like secret recipe under wraps, would not address the veracity of its claims, the association said, which has dropped the company in the FTC's lap. The FTC said it will investigate.

Maybe it's hard to get people to confess to buying from infomercials. On www.infomercialscams.com, run by Justin Leonard -- a Nevada man with his own fitness business -- customers give only their first names.

But anonymity makes it easier to reveal the soul. Ask any priest.

Pauly -- who bought the Sharper Image Ionic Breeze air purifier for $350 -- plaintively writes: "I purchased this product because I am a retard. I saw something shiny on TV and it was late. This happens to me from time to time."