Veteran ShopNBC Hosts Charla Rines And Mike Davidson Shown The Revolving Door At No. 3 Home Shopping Network

Charla Rines

It looks like long-time ShopNBC hosts Charla Rines and Mike Davidson are the latest to lose their jobs under the regime of the shopping network’s chief Keith Stewart. We guess the turnaround at the No. 3 shopping network isn’t going as well as we thought.

We’re always the last to know, so thank God for the home shopping forums, posters to our blog and ShopNBC’s Facebook page. They were burning up with comments from irate fans of Rines and Davidson, alleging that the pair had been canned because of their age.

We checked the host list on ShopNBC’s Web page Thursday night, and Rines and Davidson were gone.

Mike Davidson

“It is true,” a ShopNBC spokesman said Friday. “They’re no longer with the company.”

He declined to make any additional comment.

Rines, a brassy (as in loud) blonde with spiked hair and a wicked sense of humor, was a fixture at ShopNBC. She joined the network in 1984, and typically did jewelry shows.

Davidson, a former radio disc jockey, has been at ShopNBC since 1997.

ShopNBC now has 18 show hosts, down from 20.

January is a bad time for ShopNBC hosts. A year ago ShopNBC’s husband-and-wife team, Pam and Wes McCoy, were axed as hosts, although Pam still sells a clothing line on the network.

Don’t feel too bad, Charla and Mike. We were laid off in January a year ago, so we know how you feel.

ShopNBC Gets Back A Husband-And-Wife Team As QVC/HSN Alum Judy Crowell Joins Hubby Paul Deasy On The No. 3 Home Shopping Network

Veteran home shopping host Judy Crowell says her return to Minnesota is like Dorothy coming back home from Oz.

Crowell, an Army brat, began her career in home shopping in 1989 at Cable Value Network, CVN, in Minnesota in1989. Later this month, Nov. 24, Crowell will debut a new accessory and clothing line on ShopNBC, which is in Minneapolis.

“It’s almost like Dorothy,” Crowell said. “I clicked my heels and I’m going back home again, full circle.”

Crowell and her husband Paul Deasy, who is guest host for a jewelry line on ShopNBC, both started their gigs as home shopping hosts in 1989. While Crowell was at CVN, Deasy was at Home Shopping Network, now called HSN.

“Ironically, as life would have it, our lives were parallel before we met each other,” Crowell said.

Judy Crowell and Springer Spaniel friend Brie

Crowell had also traveled to places like China so she could discuss jade on the air, while Deasy have been to Africa at tanzanite mines and to Australia to see opals mined, to better describe them.

The husband-and-wife team have a common love of travel and jewelry, as well as “the love of really being able to tell a story about where things come from so that our customer could appreciate the experience and what it takes to get the product into their hands, that it’s not just plucked from a tree,” according to Crowell.

Crowell and Deasy both first worked at QVC and then HSN together, until exiting the No. 2 home shopping channel.

One of our most-asked questions is why did the married couple leave HSN. Deasy exited in December 2007, while Crowell left in April 2008.

After 18 years of each being a host, Crowell said, “We each kind of came to the conclusion that it was just time for a new challenge….That really is the truth. It was just time to move on and do some new things.”

Crowell and Deasy each made the choice to leave HSN themselves, according to Crowell.

“Paul had made the decision to leave first, and I was thinking about it,” she said. “I really had one of these moments, it was actually a long weekend, of sitting in front of the fireplace and staring into the fire and thinking I’ve been a television personality for 28 years, and now I’m thinking about getting out of the business and taking a chance, with no net.”

It was not an easy decision, according to Crowell.

“It was really scary because I really love the business and I loved being on television and I love the interaction with the customers,” she said. “That’s why you do it. …Whenever that phone call would come in, and it was somebody who would say, ‘Hi, I’ve been watching you for so many years. It’s so nice to talk to you. Say hi to Paul.’ That’s the joy in this…and now you’re saying goodbye to it.”

Paul Deasy

Full-year non-compete clauses kept Crowell and Deasy off the air, and gave them time to build their own businesses.

“If you were to ask ‘Why were they gone for so long, that answers part of that question,’” she said.

In addition to planning her ShopNBC line, Crowell has been doing voiceover work. She has also joined the World Fashion Council and is taking classes to be certified a fashion trend forecaster.

Crowell and Deasy approached ShopNBC about doing lines for it, according to Crowell.

“At one point we were talking about, ‘You can to one channel, I can go to another,'” she said. “And we considered that for awhile, but as timing would have it, as the needs of the different channels would have it, it turned out as they say, meant to be.”

Crowell and Deasy are in a way replacements for home-shopping’s other veteran husband-and-wife team, Pam and Wes McCoy. The McCoy’s were let go as hosts from ShopNBC in a cost-cutting measure, but Pam still has a clothing line on ShopNBC. 

The jewelry line Deasy guest hosts, the Gem Insider, debuted in July.

“ShopNBC has treated us like gold,” Crowell said. “They’re thrilled to have us both on board.”

Deasy’s book “Colored Gemstones” is sold on ShopNBC. And he is working on a second book on gems, this one on opals.

“From now on he’s going to be focusing on individual gemstones,” Crowell said. “And then he eventually wants to write another book similar to the one that’s already available, but on another whole series of gems that he didn’t have a chance to touch on in this book. There are hundreds of other ones.”

The night before their 2003 wedding, Crowell and Deasy with Kristen and Kyle

Crowell and Deasy still live in Florida, where their former employer HSN is based. They don’t plan to relocate to Minneapolis, where ShopNBC is located.

First of all, Deasy’s children, Kristen and Kyle, from a prior marriage live in Florida, as do Crowell’s parents.

And Crowell said that she has resided in the Midwest, in states such as Wisconsin, while working for TV before coming to home shopping.

“It’s a great place to live,” Crowell said. “It’s absolutely beautiful. The people are wonderful, but it’s really cold…. There’s something about landing in Tampa. Whenever we come home, it feels like a vacation.”

Crowell accompanies Deasy when he travels to Minneapolis for his ShopNBC shows.

“We’re up there a couple of times a month,” she said.

It looks like Crowell and Deasy have found happiness.

“We’re a great team,” she said. “We’re really lucky. It took a long time to find.”

See related story, “QVC and HSN Veteran Judy Crowell Explains Her New Line on ShopNBC.”

Gained Weight Or Pregnant? What’s Up With Heftier QVC Hosts Like Jacque Gonzales, and HSN’s Connie Craig-Carroll and Shivan Sarna?

What’s one of the most-asked question from our Web site viewers? It’s whether specific QVC and HSN hosts are pregnant.

In the past week or so there have been numerous variations of the inquiry, regarding QVC’s Jill Bauer, Jane Treacy and Jacque Gonzales; and HSN’s Shivan Sarna, Lynn Murphy, Connie Craig-Carroll and Suzanne Runyan.

We wish we had the answer to your question, but we don’t. We’ve already blogged and said that these hosts have gained a lot of weight in the past few months. They can’t all be pregnant.

Jacque Gonzales

Next thing you know people will be asking if QVC’s David Venable, who has packed on a few pounds after taking over the cooking beat, is in the family way.

Neck-in-neck with the pregnancy question is what happened to Pam McCoy and Wes McCoy at ShopNBC. Cost-cutting, my friends, cost-cutting.

Unlike Other Hosts (You There Lisa?), HSN’s Shivan Sarna Swears She Bought Three Sets Of The Today’s Special Pearl Necklaces

Shivan Sarna

Has a certain HSN host been reading our Homeshoppingista blog? We think Shivan Sarna may have taken a peek. Here’s why.

We’ve done several blogs on QVC host Lisa Robertson’s claim in nearly every show that she plans to buy an item, or more, that she is presenting. We started keeping track during the Stephen Dweck premiere. If she’s telling the truth, she must have one hell of a big jewelry box and closet.

On QVC rival HSN Saturday morning, Sarna was doing a presentation on the network’s Today’s Special, a set of four freshwater pearl necklaces for $100.

Sarna told viewers that certain online forums, we think that’s how she phrased it, had made comments about home shopping hosts claiming to own or wanting to buy merchandise they are presenting. Could it be our blog she was referencing?

Sarna said that she had been wearing a sample of the pearl necklaces for several weeks, and that last night, “I bought three sets myself.”

OK Sarna, we’ll take your word for it. But we’re still not believing Lisa.

We enjoy Sarna on HSN. She offers minimal hype, and she is a rockhound like us, but a trained one. She is a graduate gemologist from the Gemological Institute of America, which is apparently not an easy credential to get.

But we’re not feeling that HSN SV. We have some pearls, but we really love gemstones. Our birthstone is the diamond, and we have a smattering of those, but we often wear crystal quartz, white topaz, white zircon and white sapphire as substitutes.

We always wear natural gemstones, no cubic zirconia. We believe in those wacky New Age notions that gems and rocks have different powers and energies, so we want the real McCoy (we’re not talking about Wes or Pam) next to our skin.

We have a quartz crystal from Scottsdale, Ariz., next to our bed. And like every vortex-seeking chucklehead, we’ve been to the red-rock wonderland Sedona (now sadly overdeveloped) about a dozen times.

And this actually is not all that crazy, after all. Don’t radios and other electronic equipment use quartz to transmit energy? We’re just saying.

They’re Running Out Of Home Shopping Networks To Work At: Judy Crowell To Join Husband Paul Deasy On ShopNBC

Judy Crowell

We are indebted to the posters on QVC’s forums, who are more on the ball than us. Here’s the scoop they uncovered: Judy Crowell will be joining her husband Paul Deasy on ShopNBC.

We recently wrote a blog about Deasy, a gemstone expert who now has a collection called the Gem Insider on ShopNBC. Deasy met Crowell when they were both hosts on QVC, and they married. They left QVC and both turned up at HSN as hosts.

Then they were gone, until Deasy debuted on ShopNBC. And now the ShopNBC program guide says that The Judy Crowell Collection will debut on ShopNBC Nov. 24 with two shows.

There is no information yet on ShopNBC’s Web site about what Crowell’s products will be, but we think it’s a good bet that it’s jewelry. We’ll see.

Here is the happy couple on Deasy’s Web site, but we saw no info about Crowell’s ShopNBC line.

ShopNBC used to have a husband-and-wife host team, Wes and Pam McCoy. But the two were let go in an apparent cost-cutting measure, although Pam still has a clothing line on the network.

Gem Expert Paul Deasy, A QVC And HSN Veteran, Appears With Jewelry Line On ShopNBC, Sans Wife Judy Crowell

Fans of Paul Deasy, a veteran QVC and HSN host who now has a jewelry line at ShopNBC, can tune in to see him Tuesday at noon and 7 p.m. That guy gets around!

Deasy, who wrote a book called “Colored Gemstones,” has a collection called Gem Insider on ShopNBC.

Deasy was first a host on QVC, where he met the woman who later became his wife, QVC host Judy Crowell. Then they both left QVC and turned up at HSN as hosts.

All of a sudden, Deasy was gone from HSN, and Crowell soon followed.

Then Deasy showed up at ShopNBC not as a host, but as a vendor.

Deasy and Crowell weren’t the only husband-and-wife team on a home shopping network. Pam and Wes McCoy were on for many years as ShopNBC hosts, paired on shows together, until they apparently got the ax nearly a year ago in cost-slashing by the financially ailing Minnesota home shopping channel.

Wes McCoy

Now Pam McCoy still appears on ShopNBC, but only as a vendor selling her clothing line, not as a host. It must be difficult appearing on a network that let you and your husband go as hosts.

We know that feeling of being let go, Pam and Wes, as does more than 10 percent of the U.S. population. So you have our sympathy. Don’t worry, karma will kick in for us all at some point.