Lowell Paxson, Who Started Home Shopping Network

Lowell “Bud” Paxson, a media executive who turned bargain hunting and impulse buying into couch potato heaven when he started the Home Shopping Network, died on Jan. 9 in Kalispell, Montana. He was 79.

A high-rolling entrepreneur who eventually started his own broadcast network, PAX TV, Paxson began his career in radio as a disc jockey, salesman, general manager and small-station owner. He purchased a minority share in his first station, WACK in Newark (NY), near his hometown, Rochester, in 1956. He spent the next two decades in a variety of business ventures, many successful and many others, as he would later readily admit, not. It was in 1977, at a radio station he owned in Clearwater (FL), that his fortunes changed for good. An advertiser at WWQT-AM was short of funds and had paid his bill in merchandise -- 112 electric can openers in a shade variously described as olive or avocado green. As Paxson told the story, he went on the air himself to offer the can openers for sale at a bargain price. All 112 sold within the hour. The station began peddling merchandise every day as a regular feature. It became so popular that five years later, with a business partner, Roy Speer, Paxson put a three-hour version of the radio feature, called the Home Shopping Club, on a local cable television channel.