For many years, the direct response TV market has thrived on the backs of celebrity endorsed infomercials. But will this trend continue? All signs indicate that it will not. TV as we know it has fundamentally changed during the last few years. Many recognize this change, but it has been so subtle that many have not.
Today, we live in a digital era and this is true when it comes to TV as well. Several years back, the very first entry into the digital TV era debuted (long before HDTV signals were available)” ReplayTV and Tivo were born. This was the true birth of digital TV, not HDTV which is just now becoming commonplace. No, the true birth of digital TV was the very first DVR (digital video recorder) which would take an analog TV signal and convert it into a digital image stored on a computer hard drive. The Direct Response TV market has never been, nor will be, the same since. Of course, it took a long time for Tivo to catch on in the marketplace – many years – but now DVR’s are as common as HDTVs, even more so. And DVR’s spell the death of the direct response TV market.
The reasons are simple. It used to be that when one of those infomercials came on, it would “draw you in” with celebrity charm and dazzle. They had a brief moment in which to capture the audience and the direct response TV wizards were very good at doing just that. The problem is that today, technically speaking, they don’t even get a chance in about 40% of America’s households that have one or more DVRs. The DVR is the ultimate personalization device for the TV. It allows you to in essence create your own channels of interest and filter through all of the fluff out there on the 148 useless channels that almost everyone has access to and just record what you want to see. Obviously, we don’t see many people pressing the record button on “Paid Sponsor Program” listings in the onscreen guide! The viewership of the direct response TV marketing sector is dwindling each and every day and it will continue to do so.
No doubt that huge conglomerates such as Guthy-Renker, Steven Scott, Sylmark and others will come up with some very new creative ways of getting back into TV with a different approach, but rest assured, they are feeling the crunch. In fact, Guthy-Renker and Steven Scott as well as Peter Spiegel have seen this coming for quite a while and have been branching out in many ways – even creating their own MLM companies (Guthy-Renker and Steven Scott formed MaxGXL and Peter Spiegel formed the recently released Kiiera Viv).
There will probably be many new diversifications from companies in the direct response TV marketplace because this trend has only just begun. They will still make billions of dollars for the next several years, but the tide is clearly changing and their actions of diversifying into other markets definitely reflect that.
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