"Raquel Welch wigs"?I don't know if it has to do with when the book was published, but I was shocked that Mimi White's article on Shop-at-Home Television didn't consider the phenomenon of the "celebrity host."
This is an interesting article from 2003, about celebrity hosts on Home Shopping Channels bringing "glamour" and "credibility" to the programs. The article names Raquel Welch, Marie Osmond, Susan Lucci, Joan Rivers, and Wolfgang Puck as just a few of the multitude of celebrity faces seen on Home Shopping shows (who knows how many "celebrities" have added their names to the list over the last 5 years). I suspect that the influx of celebrities has something to do with the online shopping craze, which most likely made it necessary for the channels to re-vamp and re-think their marketing strategies.
The celebrity phenomenon does seem to relate to the White's ideas about the HSC appealing to both "bourgeois and working-class taste cultures simultaneously," as some viewers might be awed by and attracted to the stars while others might find some perverse pleasure in the "how the mighty have fallen" appeal.
Here's one quote from the article: "The stigma of buying online or on television lessens as the pleasure of it increases…five years ago, if you said you bought your wardrobe at Target, people would think you were wacko. Now, at Fifth Ave. dinner parties people aren't afraid to say they bought that great outfit at Wal-Mart.""
Hmm...I'm not so sure about that.
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