Click on the thumbnails below to enlarge my candidates for the five most obnoxious TV pitchmen: Billy Mays, Stephanie "Flo" Courtney, Vince Offer, John Scherer, and Kevin Trudeau.  Yeah, I know that Flo is a woman, but "pitchman" is a generic term referring to someone who delivers a sales pitch. I find Billy's monotone shouting, and Flo's Saccharin cuteness, and Vince's sideshow barking, and John's know-it-all arrogance, and Kevin's reptilian deviousness repulsive.   When any of these obnoxious and way overexposed five appears on my TV screen, I mute the sound, or change the channel, or head for the kitchen (sometimes all three). I'm not alone in finding these personalities annoying. Just Google any of them, and you'll find links to others who share my opinion. So the question is, why are they still on the air, in Billy Mays' case even after death? The answer is as inescapable as the pitchmen themselves. Their commercials are effective. Apparently, a lot more people are attracted to these personalities than repelled by them, swallowing their sales pitches like hungry trout taking hooked worms. And as long as the products these pitchmen represent are selling well, they will remain on the air, in some cases posthumously.

This "Top 5" list reminds me of another annoyance. Many websites I frequent have features with titles like "Top 10 most livable cities in the world," or "Top 20 one-hit-wonders of 60's pop music," or some other such grouping. But they won't print the whole list on one page. They make you click from page to page in a slideshow format. A recent article in the LA Times online about odd photos that looked like they were photoshoped but weren't went on for more than 30 pages. A single page of thumbnails that readers could enlarge if they wished to would have sufficed. Why do websites stretch such content over so many pages? Apparently, they want to extend your visit. Do each of your clicks count as a "hit," so the website can claim a higher number of visitors and charge more for advertising? Or is it to expose you to more advertising spread over more pages? Or is it simply easier to post slideshows rather than written content?