Home Shopping Network

views updated

Home Shopping Network

The Home Shopping Network (HSN) was the first major business to earn huge profits by combining two beloved American pastimes, shopping and watching television (see entry under 1940s—TV and Radio in volume 3). Followed by many imitators, the network has expanded from small beginnings on a Florida radio (see entry under 1920s—TV and Radio in volume 2) station to become a multibillion-dollar corporation with over five million customers.

The Home Shopping Network got its start in St. Petersburg, Florida, where the company is still headquartered. In 1977, realestate developer Roy Speer (1932–) and radio broadcaster Lowell "Bud" Paxson (1935–) started a radio call-in shopping club called Suncoast Bargaineers. The club was so successful that by 1982, Speer and Paxson moved it to a local cable-TV (see entry under 1970s—TV and Radio in volume 4) channel, renaming it Home Shopping Network. The concept of HSN was that while items were being advertised live on the air by attractive, perky hosts, viewers could call on the telephone and order them. Home Shopping Network concentrated on selling to older middle-class and working-class Americans. Their most popular products included costume jewelry, cooking pots and utensils, house-cleaning equipment, and celebrity clothing and cosmetic lines. The idea of shopping without leaving home had great appeal to the viewing public. By 1985, HSN was carried on national cable stations and had over seventy-five thousand regular customers.

The Home Shopping Network remained the only television shopping channel until 1986, when seventeen other companies began to compete with them. One of these, QVC (the abbreviation stands for Quality, Value, Convenience), has grown to be HSN's major competitor in television sales, although QVC tends to appeal to a younger, wealthier audience than HSN. In 1995, Barry Diller (1942–), the former chairman of Fox Network, bought HSN and became its chairman. In the early 2000s, HSN is centered on a 55-acre campus in St. Petersburg. There, HSN employs forty-five hundred people and operates a sales Web site as well as its TV-sales shows. The corporation, which changed its name in 1998 to USA Networks, Inc., also owns Ticketmaster and the USA and SciFi cable networks.

However, HSN is still best known for television sales. The network's sales shows are broadcast live twenty-four hours a day, every day except Christmas. The shows reach millions of viewers and offer them, not necessities, but the little luxuries of life, available with a phone call and a credit card. The shows are often hosted by sports heroes or celebrities of the past who gain new fame advertising their products on HSN. Lucky callers may even get to talk to the hosts on the air. In 1996, HSN opened the Museum of Modern Shopping in St. Petersburg to showcase their most popular products.

—Tina Gianoulis