Like Ideal World, it is at times hilarious to watch. Unfortunately, a small group of people who see shopping television as serving a different purpose to the rest of us, isn’t going to sustain the venture, as we are watching to laugh, not to buy. The people who they do need, who may buy something, probably don’t know the channel is even there. It is difficult to find on Freeview without its own channel number and swops around within the options it does have with the main craft channel. It is being broadcast in a tiny studio with limited workspace and graphics, and is failing to even do the broadcasting basics by making its viewers what is live and is not. I suspect the people behind the scenes who started this venture, hope the already established craft buyers will become buyers of both. I have my doubts that will automatically happen, as crafting products attract a dedicated audience and buying base that isn’t necessarily easily interchangeable.
You come back again to the underlying problem all shopping channels are facing - a dying off audience. Promoting values like family, friendship and fun is language and values that are very much the domain of older shoppers in the way the channel expresses them, and older shoppers aren’t going to sustain a business long term. The younger ones, who, in the natural scale of things, would become old and replace them eventually, don’t want to shop this way. They want ‘Instant’ ‘Instant’ and ‘Sick’.. Facing facts, if Ideal World had launched in 2023 and not 2000, most of its target market would have been dead by about 2015. Bring in yoof presenters, acid music under the verbals, and presenters whizzing around the goods on e-scooters and you’d still struggle to sell to a market that is comfortable and happy buying in the modern way. In 20 years time or so, it will be interesting to see if this type of shopping by television even exists any longer?