Pitchmen – As Seen On TV
Last year, I wrote an article about one of the best shows on television, The Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch. I am still a huge fan and I encourage everyone to watch this show. The series’ fifth season will air tonight (Tuesday 9pm, Discovery Channel). Don’t miss it!!!
Deadliest Catch was one of the original reality job documentary shows on cable television. Since then Discovery and other cable networks have been trying to capitalize on the same type of scary crab fishing style goldmine. I can think of easily a dozen shows that have come along that just don’t match up.
The Discovery Channel is currently plugging away at a new show for this season, Pitchmen. HOLY CRAP!!! Has it really come to this? Isn’t this one of the signs of the apocalypse? From what I can tell, this show is the behind the scenes life of Pitchmen; those less than productive members of society that pump-up crap we don’t need being sold on television. They lead the charge of the “As Seen On TV” movement, selling crap not worthy to be sold in stores.
If you have ever hit your cable guide button at 3am on a week night, you’ll know that Infomercials are big business. Hell, they even have about four entire cable networks devoted to nothing but Home Shopping (HSN, QVC, etc…). These channels and shows are proof that people will watch AND buy anything. Thank you, P.T. Barnum!
I personally blame the fore-father of this genre and Nobel Prize winner, Ron Popeil. His company, Ronco, could sell shit tied to a stick and add the phrase “O-Matic” to it. “The Fecal-O-Matic… Act now and get two for the price of one!” 
There also was the “Juiceman”, Jay Kordich. He would juice anything, including his own underwear, if he thought it would sell his machine. George Foreman and your crappy grill, you are no saint either. I’ve seen your crap hocked on television for almost two decades.
“But wait, there’s more!” Now these Pitchmen have achieved such pop-culture status that they get their own documentary television show. I truly don’t think this show will be a success unless they get Vince Offer to do a segment on this show. I wonder if the Shamwow guy was in this show but was quickly edited out after his whole alleged hooker biting incident. There has not been a TV Pariah since Marv Albert got busted for his naughty sex-capades.
Are you going to watch Pitchmen? Have you ever bought anything off of television? Are you going to watch Deadliest Catch? We want to hear from you.
This may make all of the gents at FupDuck no longer <3 me….but….yes. I am highly intrigued by the Pitchmen.
Going to college for Marketing/PR has forced me to watch many an infomercial and they’re sort of genius in nature. Did you know for some reason…statistics have shown that a large percentage of people will actually watch the infomercial? Hm…
I own Oxyclean and Kaboom! which I believe is yelled by Billy Mayes. I bought it at Lowes, though….
My sister just bought a Snuggie, that’s the damn truth.
I’ll watch a show or two, why not, it can’t be any worse than the VH1 showmances.