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Dear Food Network,
I have been an avid watcher of your network since 2000, when I moved into a little one bedroom apartment down in Savannah, Ga.
At the time I wouldn’t have considered myself a “foodie,” per-say. I enjoyed eating, especially eating out (and boy, was Savannah the place to do that!), but didn’t really cook.
As in, at all.
Like, burn-a-fried-egg-to-a-pan-and-let-a-bag-of-potatoes-rot-in-a-drawer-because-they-were-forgotten, “at all.”
Then I discovered your little network that mixed both chefs and everyday people up with programs that were user-friendly for novice cooks, and had—gasp! —variety in styles and personalities, unlike your competitors on public television.
Fun little shows like $40 a Day were interspersed between cooking demo programs, which ruled the channel lineup.
As the decade muscled on, new chefs and shows were added, along with more and more non-demo programming. I fell in love with some (Chopped, Iron Chef America, The Best Thing I Ever Ate, Food Network Star) and couldn’t quite wrap my mind around others.
Then a funny thing happened.
It was like the blink of an eye. All of a sudden the only time you could watch cooking demo shows was if you were home during the day.
And I work during the day, like full-time, away from my home.
The Cooking Channel magically appeared (kinda how MTV2 showed up when MTV stopped airing music videos) full of new, fresh programming akin to the old Food Network. Except my cable provider doesn’t offer it. Yeah, I know—bummer.
And simultaneously, you started airing certain programs with back-to-back vigor. Strings of episodes of the same show for an entire evening.
Gosh, you better really love Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and Restaurant: Impossible, because that’s all your gonna get two evenings out of the week.
So, why the letter, you ask?
Well, I’d like to ask for a program shake-up. Bring back some cooking demo shows in the evening, add more special episodes like The Big Waste, limit evening programs to two back-to-back episodes of what must be if you’re showing them so often fan-favorites.
It’d be a start.
I like watching your Food Network chefs and cooks in action.
I credit them for my foray into home-cooking foodie-dom. I really do.
Cheers,
Liza | (a)Musing Foodie
