Channel surfers may have thought they’d discovered a new paid programming station earlier this month. Not so–that was Channel 11’s latest fund-raising drive, featuring New Age health guru Gary Null and lightweight financial guru Suze Orman. Their modestly titled infomercials–Null’s How to Live Forever and Orman’s The Courage to Be Rich, both designed to sell their books and tapes as pledge premiums–played almost nonstop while the authors joined fawning PBS hosts during breaks. They’re not exactly Nova.
THE PITCH
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ORMAN Advice mostly consists of Stuart Smalley-ish exhortations to gain power over your money through your thoughts. Helpful hints–like “use discount brokers”–are so basic they’re harmless. Her program will give you the courage to retire in a house you own with enough money to eat out once in a while.
ORMAN Says WTTW will make viewers rich: “Tonight we’re going to partner with you…Tonight we’re going to give you the tools so you can walk into the new millenium with that which you deserve–financial freedom.”
NULL Joins pledge person Rhea flipping through the pages of his book The Complete Guide to Health and Nutrition.
Null: Warts.
NULL Doctors and “the medico-techno industry”–anyone who doesn’t endorse his ideas, particularly his balding cure, which calls for drinking a lot of juice. He says it worked for him. “You can change a genetic sequence…The guys at MIT don’t like that, the guys at Harvard don’t like that, because they’re not gonna get the billion dollar royalties on the, you know, genetic engineering.”
