"Pennyaline" > wrote in message
...
> Whatever made me think it would be anything but more of the same? For now,
> there are no loud blustery cooking challenges and "Next Best" anything
> competitions, but that won't last long. It's just the usual assortment of
> artificial personalities who call themselves "food people" generating
> prefab, highly edited drivel. God help them if one of them should make a
> mistake while pretending to generate their foodie fare. There will be only
> perfection here, and I'll bet there's a sign at the door saying so!
>
> I had hope for it when I saw they'd be running old Julia Child shows and
> (saints be praised) Graham Kerr. Those two knew how to live on camera:
> Julia dropped things, burned herself and misplaced ingredients, and
> counseled cooks on how to deal with that, and Kerr cavorted about his set
> and his kitchen meeting both success and failure with equal abandon.
> Things were allowed to play out in order from start to finish, and there
> was limited editing. Something terrible might happen to either of them at
> any moment, and it was great television. And oh my, watching these two
> shows again on the Cooking Channel, I'm reminded of just how much harvest
> gold, avocado green and burnt orange there was around at the time. My god,
> it was everywhere!
>
> The last of my hopes for the Cooking Channel faded quickly when the first
> commercial break plowed into Julia's public television realm. There are
> three commercial breaks in a half hour program, roughly jammed into
> programs not meant to have any. The effect is harsh. It tears jagged gaps
> into programs that heretofore had impeccable continuity and timing. I
> grieved when, on return from commercial breaks, our Julia would suddenly
> be in the middle of something new while leaving pre-break tasks
> unfinished, or the action would abruptly jump to another room, or finished
> dishes had already been laid out in array, or dessert was being served...
> What had I missed? Was I the only one lost?
>
> The Galloping Gourmet was designed for commercial breaks, so the
> interruptions don't hurt it so much. The effect on Julia, however, is
> stultifying. But the biggest problem I have with it is that the Cooking
> Channel has taken programs that show the genuine article, treats them like
> curiosities instead of the roots of its own tree, then spends the rest of
> its time catering to big egos with nerdy glasses and overwrought kitchens
> who aren't really doing anything but talking loudly and leering sideways
> into however many cameras there are. I mean, we knew that Julia and Kerr
> had their hands in the mixing bowl, but these new guys who rely on
> ubercloseups and beauty shots for everything... Jesus, those could be
> anybody's hands in there. Why don't they show me that they know how to do
> something?
>
> I just don't like the reality TV approach that these newer shows evince.
> Flash over substance, flash over skill, flash over patience, flash in the
> pan. There is no style in there anywhere. And cooking shows need style.
> Not what the kitchen looks like style, and not who made the appliances
> style. I mean real style. Real personalities with real talents and real
> abilities instead of flash.


My thought is they had to start a new network as a place to put the 'winners
of their own cooking shows' from all the contests on FoodTV.
-ginny