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The forerunner of HSN was launched by Lowell Paxson (who later established PAX-TV, which is now Ion Television) and Roy Speer in 1982 as the Home Shopping Club, a local cable channel seen on Vision Cable and Group W Cable in Pinellas County, Florida. It expanded into the first national shopping network three years later on July 1, 1985, changing its name to the Home Shopping Network, and pioneering the concept of a televised sales pitch for consumer goods and services. Its competitor and future owner QVC was launched the following year.
In 1986, HSN began a second network that broadcast free-to-air on a number of television stations it had acquired under the name Silver King Broadcasting. In 1992, HSN spun off from Silver King Broadcasting, and afterwards saw Liberty Media acquire stock in the network. In 1996, the station group was sold back to Silver King Broadcasting, which was now owned by Barry Diller, and changed its name to "HSN Inc." after its merger with Silver King was completed. Under Diller's leadership, the HSN also acquired the USA Network, Sci-Fi Channel and Universal Television in October 1997. This resulted in HSN Inc. being changed to USA Network Inc. The purchase was finalized in February 1998.
In September 2000, Home Shopping Network changed its name to HSN.
Mindy Grossman became CEO of HSN in 2006, and aggressively reinvented and relaunched the brand. She took HSN public in 2008, and has overseen its multibillion-dollar retail portfolio and multimedia expansion. Grossman left HSNi in May 2017 to helm Weight Watchers.
In April 2017, HSN CEO Mindy Grossman stepped down to assume the CEO position at Weight Watchers. On July 6, 2017, Liberty Interactive announced it would buy the remaining 62% of HSN stock it did not already own in order to acquire the company for its QVC Group. QVC CEO Mike George would be CEO of the combined company.
In September 2018, HSN had partnered with Pickler & Ben for a "shop the show" feature that allows viewers to buy featured items from HSN via the show's website and HSN.com.
Sister channels
HSN2, launched on August 1, 2010, acts as a timeshift channel carrying tape-delayed presentations of products and programming. Dish Network has carried it since launch.
America's Store, formerly the Home Shopping Club Overnight Service, was HSN's secondary service that was on the air from 1988 until April 2007.
Operations
HSN's United States operations are based in St. Petersburg, Florida, which houses its corporate headquarters, studio and broadcasting facilities. Additional call center facilities are located in Roanoke, Virginia & Toledo, Ohio. Distribution centers are situated in Roanoke, Piney Flats, Tennessee, and Fontana, California. In October, 2018 Quarate announced the closure of the Roanoke distribution center in favor of a combined QVC/HSN distribution center to be located in Bethlehem, PA.
As of today, HSN and QVC is carried over the digital public airwaves and can be viewed without a cable subscription or a streaming device. Additionally a new Streaming service was introduced to cable providers which provides a different shopping experience compared to if a viewer went online and ordered merchandise.
Technology
Call center
HSN National began with a standard rotary phone system that concentrated calls to the front of the queue. This corresponded to the front row of order takers in the HSN Studio at the Levitz Center (so named as the location was a former Levitz furniture store) in Clearwater, Florida. After several months, this system was no longer adequate and HSN entered a phase where a phone system from GTE was used. HSN claimed that the system's inability to handle the high call volumes resulted in a loss of business. HSN sued GTE for $1.5 billion. In a counter-libel suit, GTE claimed that HSN had slandered the company; GTE won a $100 million judgment. Both parties settled out of court.
Original order-taking system
HSN developed its original order-taking system on a Burroughs Large System mainframe using the LINC 10 fourth generation language.
