"Informercials"

Soft-selling on cable TV

It seemed to lumber ponderously down the runway for years, but now cable television is definitely airborne. A quarter of the nation's 77.8 million TV homes are hooked up to one of the 4,600 local cable companies that pipe into living rooms everything from first-run movies, hard-sell religion and soft-core porn shows to kiddie programs and the proceedings of Congress live. Cable-systems owners, present or prospective, are as hot on Wall Street as genetic engineering firms, and advertisers are beginning to eye cable TV as a promising vehicle for commercials. Though at present a mere $45 million in cable-television revenue comes from advertising, in contrast with more than $11 billion for over-the-air television networks and stations, that amount is expected to leap to $1.5 billion by the end of the decade. Says Carl Ally, chairman of the Ally & Gargano ad agency in New York City: "While the big three networks are chewing at each other, cable and other technologies will eat at them from the bottom."

For advertisers, commercials on cable TV offer a more specialized audience at a fraction of the cost of time on regular shows. A 30-second ad on one of the three dozen or more national networks that have grown up to service local cable channels costs only about $500, while the three major networks charge an average of $70,000 in prime time. And since cable TV can easily provide viewers with programs on 100 or more channels that carry only sports, for example, an advertiser can make a longer pitch on a single subject.

Cable TV ads are, so far, usually just the same frenetic 30-second spots seen on the mainline channels. Cable News Network, Ted Turner's 24-hour all-news channel from Atlanta, carries the standard commercials for Quaker Oats, Holiday Inns and others.

Leading advertisers, though, are testing a totally new type of commercial, or "informercial" as they call them, that will soon be used widely on cable television. These will range in length from 30 minutes to four hours. Sears, for example, could buy half an hour of air time to explain how to redecorate a porch, with Sears paint and Craftsman tools, of course. Ads comparing brand-name products, extolling the merits of one over the other, could be dealt with in laborious detail. Says Michael Dann, senior program adviser to ABC's Video Enterprises: "The advertiser who wants to spell out the differences between Phillips' Milk Of Magnesia and Pepto-Bismol is going to get a hell of a lot more time to do it."

Some informercials are already being carried on the Home Shopping Show by the Modern Satellite Network. The weekly half-hour program, which reaches 3.8 million households in every state, consists of nonstop commercials in a talk show format. Advertisers normally buy nine minutes of air time to discuss their product or explain how it works. This week Revlon will tape its first informercial, which demonstrates how to give its Realistic Instant Styling permanents at home. Other advertisers on the show include Pillsbury, Mr. Coffee and Encyclopaedia Britannica.

A public long accustomed to ads on regular TV seems to accept them readily on cable shows. A survey by the New York ad agency Benton & Bowles showed that almost half of those who do not now have pay cable television said they would gladly hook up, when the system is offered , even if it carried ads.

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