Former and current employees at ValueVision Media — the parent company of ShopHQ — say the home-shopping network gets under their skin and that’s the problem.
“One very talented host left the company when she felt pressured to have Botox,” wrote Pamela McCoy, who worked at ShopHQ, mostly as an on-air presenter, for nearly 20 years. “The network actually organized ‘Botox parties’ in an effort to make it easier.”
says ValueVision executives organized “Botox parties” for on-air talent.Honeysett
McCoy, who left ShopHQ a year-and-a-half ago, has since been overwhelmed by distressed calls from former colleagues. Some complain about “department heads that are so verbally abusive” their underlings “are literally afraid to go to work,” McCoy wrote in a letter to Greg Taxin, the Clinton Group president who has put up a dissident slate in an effort to take control of ValueVision’s board at the June 18 annual meeting.
McCoy called the abuse especially demeaning to ShopHQ’s female presenters — for whom, she said, such books as “How Not to Look Old” and “Younger Next Year for Women” became mandatory reading. Others were “encouraged to have plastic surgery,” added McCoy, who now hawks a line on Jewelry Television and plans to vote her ValueVision shares in favor of the dissident slate.
Another letter writer teed off on ValueVision CEO Keith Stewart — a frequent target of insiders expressing support of the Clinton Group — and his “blatant disrespect and disregard for others.”
This self-styled “concerned employee” didn’t have much regard for Stewart’s top lieutenants, either. Their top priority, he wrote, was “maintaining their jobs.”
A spokesperson for ValueVision countered: “We vehemently deny these false and outrageous allegations, which are completely unfair to the talented team who love coming to work every day to build on ValueVision’s success. We will continue to stand for the highest standards of integrity and respect.”