Fighting Back

Consumerism goes show biz

A viewer wrote, "My mother recently had an unfortunate experience with Mrs. Smith's chicken crepes." The audience tensed. Host David Horowitz let the suspense mount, holding the letter in his hand, pausing as if he were about to hop a slow freight into the twilight zone. Then he related the outcome: Mom--who isn't the kind of person who usually does these things--sat down and dropped the Mrs. Smith folks a line. She told them what one of their featherweight delicacies had done to her dental work, and the folks at Mrs. Smith sent her a check right back. Applause from the audience! And--"for fighting back"--the letter writer gets a gift from David Horowitz, an authentic FIGHT BACK! WITH DAVID HOROWITZ T shirt. Is everybody happy?

Not quite. Horowitz runs a lively, sometimes hectoring weekly half hour of consumer advocacy out of Los Angeles' KNBC, which is syndicated to 36 stations and takes a special delight in giving TV commercials the hotfoot. There are other raisers of consumer consciousness who are just as solid--NBC's Betty Furness, or 20/20's John Stossel--but none can quite match Horowitz's zealous show-biz savvy. Looking a little like the recording secretary of the Beverly Hills Jaycees, Horowitz gets cozy with his studio audience. He answers their questions; he invites them up at show's end to check out, say, several different containers of jelly beans, all of which claim to be the White House candy of choice; he asks them what they think "new improved" labels mean, and then tells them. Most of all, and best of all, he goes to finicky lengths to test the extravagant claims of those commercials that everyone loves to hate. Will a Bic still flick? Will a Timex still tick?

"I'm an investigative reporter," says Horowitz, 43, a former NBC News correspondent. "Our show is basically the opposite end of what they do on Madison Avenue. Fewer and fewer people believe commercials--with good reason." The Tonka Toy Co. ran an ad that showed one of its toy trucks surviving a stomping by an elephant. Horowitz got his own Tonka and submitted it to pachyderm pummeling at the Los Angeles Zoo. When the vehicle was removed from the cage, it was crushed flatter than a shadow.

Watching Horowitz unsuccessfully trying to shatter glass with a high note recorded on Memorex tape is a little like watching Houdini expose a seance. Commercials are viewed as a kind of ghost hunting; the greater fun is for viewers to see how they are being fooled, to see the bamboozler bamboozled. Most of the products Horowitz tests pass with high marks--he estimates 75%--but the blood sport is watching the advertisers turn into bozos when Horowitz can't wipe the scrawl off the Sherwin-Williams paint job, when three dozen eggs (out of 14 dozen) don't survive a drive in a Renault and when eleven shoppers out of eleven pass over margarine for the high-priced spread.

Horowitz has attracted enough attention not only to be a frequent guest on Johnny Carson's show but also to be parodied there; the master portrays him as "David Howitzer, Big Gun of the Consumer Movement." In addition, manufacturers and ad agencies offer hefty fees for his expertise. Horowitz passes up the offers, but accepts cooperation from the companies whose commercials he reproduces. They often, indeed, seem eager to help, whether because--like Peerless Water Filter or Orville Redenbacher popcorn--they believe in what they sell and tell, or, like some more cynical outfits, they just appreciate the plug.

Oh, yes. The Bic, crushed by an eight-ton semi, still flicked. And the Timex, buried in sand, submerged in a washer and tied to an outboard motor, still ticked. In this life it is the small reassurances that have to carry us the distance.

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