Joseph Segel, pioneering founder of the QVC Shopping Network, dies

Back in the Dark Ages — before the internet, before Amazon — there were other ways to satisfy your craving for impulse buying from the comfort of your home.

You could sit down in front of your television at the appointed hour, pick up the receiver on your tele- phone — if the cord stretched that far — and order from the Home Shopping Network.

When Joseph Segel, a mar- keting expert and entrepreneur who had founded the Franklin Mint, the maker of commemorative coins and other collectibles, saw a video of the Home Shop- ping Network in 1986, he thought it rather primitive. He was sure he could create a better, more professional shopping experience.

What he came up with was QVC, which became a powerhouse television shopping network that would rival the Home Shopping Network and later eclipse it. (Both are now owned by a conglomerate called Qurate Retail Group.)

QVC featured live broadcasts of unscripted hosts demonstrating products — from jewelry and intimate apparel to electronics and snowblowers — while keeping up a waterfall of chitchat as they built a relationship with their audience.

“QVC made it easier for people to shop than going to the mall,” Segel said.

QVC’s success on televi- sion presaged that of retail- ers on the internet like Amazon and Walmart.

“He was a visionary whose ideas changed the way the world shops,” Mike George, chief executive of Qurate, said in a statement.

Segel died Saturday at an assisted-living facility in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania. He was 88.

His son Marvin said the cause was congestive heart failure.