BuyTV?
I get all kinds of catalogs in the mail, but today I got the "Buy Magazine". Omigod, if this isn't screaming "desperation", I don't know what would be.
On the cover is an introduction to "Buy TV". Let's go to page 06 and quote:
"What do you get when you take the season's hottest entertainment and technology products and add celebrity interviews and appearances in one half-hour TV show? BuyTV! This new entertainment adventure takes shopping from home, laptop, or cell phone to a whole new level, bringing you the latest products via an interactive television experience."
Is it just me, or does this sound like some failed dot-com? Lemme answer the question of the first sentence. What do you get when you mix those things up? A self-serving half-hour ad for expensive toys? Sounds about right. And the second sentence doesn't even need comment. Just imagine it's 1999, and you're a venture capitalist reading that sentence. Count the buzzwords.
Of course, that's assuming you even reach page 06. (Yeah, that's how the pages are really numbered.) On the cover is the cast. Four hot women and a guy (who might be cute; don't ask me for an opinion). The two in front are "Rick Schwartz and Michele Merkin, the co-hosts" (ibid). Michele is wearing a tummy-revealing, strapless tube-top thing and tight jeans, which of course is an outfit befitting a co-host of such an important show.
And if you make it to page 06, you find that half the copy is a section titled "The women of BuyTV". (I guess the guy of BuyTV isn't that important.) Michele is the glamorous co-host who rates chauvinistic comments like, "Sounds like the perfect woman--except she doesn't like to cook." Lisa is the blonde, the young one. Ryan is the brown haired, taller one who's into sports, and Cassandra is the token non-Caucasian of the group. Each of the "spokesmodels" (yes, that's their term) gets a paragraph and a small half-inch by half-inch headshot to explain why they're the "perfect combination of beauty, brains and fun" and ideal to "show us the hottest products."
Ah, everything old is new again. Who's the brains behind this? Take a look at the registrant of buytv.com: Value Capital of Aliso Viejo, CA. A Google search finds that they were a 33% owner of the stock of Fax.com when they were found guilty of unsolicited faxing. It might be me, but personally I avoid investing in companies whose business model is based on doing an illegal activity. Looks like they have a new winner coming up here.