Popular Culture Review
chef/owner Jeremiah Tower maintains a heavy schedule of public appearances,
charity events, travel, and interviews with the press. His life reads like a script
from the television show Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.'''^
There was even a proven audience for chefs in action prior to the Food
Network. In fact, in the Network’s early days, a portion of its programming
consisted of reruns from the Public Broadcasting Service’s own most successful
lineup. Among these were cooking show “classics” taped from the 1960s
through 1980s with influential home cook and chef advocate Julia Child and
chefs Jacques Pepin, Graham Kerr, Jeff Smith, and Martin Yan. In the 1980s, a
kind of “chef theater” developed in upscale eateries with the widely imitated
“exhibition kitchen.” Its first purposeful installation may have been in the
upstairs cafe of Alice Waters’ legendary Chez Panisse when it was added to the
Berkeley restaurant in 1980. Yet the exhibition-kitchen concept was even more
famously and theatrically realized in Los Angeles at Wolfgang Puck’s Spago of
1982. The idea was not only to showcase freshness of ingredients and honesty in
preparation but the chefs themselves. At Spago, Puck could be seen from
everywhere in the restaurant and had spotlights trained on him.
Still, the Food Network’s impact on the status of chefs is undeniable.
That the channel is among cable TV’s biggest success stories is some testament
to that. In 1993 it started with approximately 6 million subscribing households.
But, by 2006, 6 million was the number of distinct users drawn to the Network’s
website each month! By then, TVFN had subscribers on par with CNN. It
captured approximately 87 of a total 109 million TV households. The Network
has performed well and gained popularity consistently throughout its history.
Already in 1996 the number of viewers had increased 40 percent in prime time
during that year alone, forceful in light of the same year’s 8.4 percent overall
growth of cable TV viewers. Then, from 1997 to 2004, its Nielsen rating
increased steadily each year. Though still low in the TV-cosmic scheme of
things, since a rating of 1.0 equals 1 percent of TV households, TVFN’s rating
did rise from 0.3 to an average of 0.7 in prime time. In 2004, TVFN was still
considered “one of cable’s top-rated networks,” showing a 20 percent jump from
the year before.
Admittedly, the Food Network—and therefore its success—has not
revolved solely around chefs. Some of its highest-rated programs, in fact, do not
feature chefs. Among these is the pop culture nostalgia machine. Unwrapped,
which concentrates on inside-the-factory reveals of the manufacture of viewers’
favorite candies and condiments of their childhood. The programs hosted by
Rachel Ray have also been a major draw. In 2004, Ray actually beat the
previously untouchable Lagasse in ratings. Her cooking show 30 Minute Meals
was typically reeling in 749,000 viewers per episode, while Emeril Live was
catching 614,000 (still, nothing to sneeze at). The most popular home-cook type
featured on the Network, Ray strikes me also as the one who most plays up that
she is not a professional cook. She frequently confesses little patience beyond