As of this writing, the fifth season The Next Food Network Star (NFNS) has concluded, and the first episode of winner Melissa D’Arabian’s show $10 Dinners has aired. As with many of the Food Network’s recent offerings, there is not much to either of them. The Food Network (TFN) has become extremely predictable in nearly everything it does (well, almost). In fact, NFNS has actually become a pretty good representation of what has gone wrong, either intentionally or unintentionally, to make TFN such a pale shadow of what it once was, just a few years ago.
When FN started, there was no intent on creating cooking superstars, the intent was simple: teaching people how to cook on a variety of levels, and getting people excited about exploring the potential of food. From the original iterations of How to Boil Water through the single-ingredient focus of Good Eats, people at nearly every level of cooking expertise could turn on FN and find something to watch. When Scripps bought the network however, the slow and downward spiral began. Now, someone like me with a lot of home experience cooking for a family (who also has restaurant experience) has at best one show to watch to learn something: the aforementioned Good Eats. There’s no secret in the fact that Alton Brown replaced Emeril Lagasse as the face of the TFN, at least until Guy Fieri arrived. Current shows on TFN are personality driven, where basic “cooking by numbers” recipe assembly has replaced the teaching of technique.
Alton entertains and teaches at the same time, proving it’s possible to do both in one show. Brown, were he available, would be the perfect replacement for Bob Tuschman (VP in charge of Production) and Susie Fogelson (VP of Marketing), the amazingly shallow and vapid executives charged with guiding the TFN into… Oblivion?
NFNS is the perfect representation of the downfall of the network because it has thrust the two people in charge of the network’s branding into the spotlight, and into their thought processes of what FN represents.
And it’s not pretty.
It’s been well over ten years since I first watched TFN, and it got to the point that most of the television I watched was TFN shows. While that might sound sad, it shows just how many good shows TFN once had. From Sara Moulton to Ming Tsai to the pre-Iron Chefs Michael Symon and Cat Cora, FN had several chefs and shows that were good at teaching new cuisines or skills.
And then came NFNS. At first, the idea was intriguing: get viewers to pitch their idea for a show to TFN, and then let the viewers ultimately decide on a winner. NFNS was clearly borne out of the success TFN had with Rachel Ray, the first host on TFN without either formal culinary training or a restaurant. While I personally find Ray’s personality annoying, her show was very much a boon to both TFN and its viewers. Clearly, TFN hoped to have lightning strike twice. The first season of NFNS had TFN vets teaching the finalists how to host a show, and the end result was Party Time with the Hearty Boys, which lasted three seasons. NFNS Season 2 gave us the ubiquitous Guy Fieri.
With Season 3, the last to allow viewers to pick a winner, we were gearing up to choose between Joshua Garcia (“JAG”), a young and exuberant Latino chef, and Rory Schepisi, who seemed to be another in the Giada/Rachel mold. However, a snafu of fairly sizable proportions screwed that up. JAG as it turned out was neither a culinary school graduate nor a veteran of the Afghani war – two aspects of his past that Tuschman and Fogelson found nearly irresistible. So, with the FN execs burned for not doing adequate homework, we were left with a choice to vote for either the resistible force (Rory) or the movable object (eventual “winner” Amy Finley). For lying to Tuschman and Fogelson and the network, JAG was sent packing, persona non grata. Clearly, nothing would allow someone to come back to the network if they did anything like what JAG had done.
I want to stop here and interject another “mild” snafu the execs made. Currently, the popular TFN show Dinner: Impossible series is beginning its 7th season, and its 6th featuring host Robert Irvine. The initial intro to the show featured a dramatic montage of visuals and music highlighting Irvine’s CV, including his experience in cooking for Prince Charles & Princess Diana or making their wedding cake. Beginning with the tagline “what you are about to see is real,” the intro also referenced Irvine’s history of cooking for U.S. Presidents.
After four seasons of Dinner: Impossible show and several appearances on other FN shows, Irvine was “fired” by the network when it was revealed that nearly everything on Irvine’s resume was fake. Both his resume and much of his life’s story, told in a very successful cookbook, turned out to be fabricated, based on almost nothing valid.
No problem! TFN brought Irvine back after a six-month “hiatus” in which he was replaced on Dinner: Impossible temporarily by Iron Chef Michael Symon, which was supposed to teach him a lesson for fibbing to the network.
The network kicked a kid with potential to the curb, but kept a “star” despite both perpetuating several lies on their resume. If only JAG had made a boatload of cash for the network before the news broke as Irvine had done, he would have been the third NFNS. Nope, we got Amy Finley, and a change in NFNS protocol.
Viewer voting was out, and the “Selection Committee” now led by Iron Chef Bobby Flay took over the selection of the next “star.”
Season 3 and the Irvine flap setting a confusing and erratic precedent that integrity means everything or nothing behind it, TFN continued on with NFNS with season 4. The selection committee seemed to make their next choice based on clearing up a demographical issue of their own creation. Young chef Aaron McCargo, Jr was chosen by the committee, increasing the number of black chefs on the network to four. It seems a lucky thing that Lisa Garza was trying too hard and Adam Gertler was too inexperienced. Without those two factors, McCargo would more than likely not have won, and thus not strengthened the FN pandering of minorities.
Pandering? I believe so. TFN hasn’t had a regular chef of Asian descent since Ming Tsai left for PBS. They don’t have any fully Latin chefs in prime time, having seemingly replaced Ingrid Hoffman with Daisy Martinez. There are as many Brits (four) as black chefs (not counting the long-disposed of Warren Brown and the documentary-featured Jeff Henderson). TFN is a very white place, despite McCargo “winning” his own show.
If anything, the one thing helping FN out in this regard was that the entire group of finalists for recent seasons of NFNS was so pathetic that it is completely plausible that McCargo was chosen for his chops and not what he could bring to the demographic mix.
However, if McCargo were really a star in TFN’s eyes, wouldn’t he have debuted in prime time and not the death-zone of programming: Sunday mornings? Not at all ironically, his show was slotted right after Down Home with the Neelys, which is more soft-core porn than cooking, featuring one-half of TFN’s black chefs.
This latest season of NFNS (its 5th) has exposed so many more areas of the network’s carelessness and condescension towards viewers that I can only imagine how ridiculous the network will get over time (and yes, I am aware that TFN has given figure skater Brian Boitano a show called What Would Brian Boitano Make, after the brilliant South Park song). Another prime example of how little regard TFN has for its viewers is its website, which automatically launches memory and bandwidth hogging video without asking site users if they want to watch video in the first place. (Note: This is why I have not included any links to FN pages in this article.)
NFNS Season 5 contestants were routinely eliminated for being bad on camera, and not for their expertise in cooking. One contestant in particular, Katie Cavuto, twice served raw or undercooked meat (poultry, in one spectacular miss-step) but was not eliminated because she simply looked better on camera than the other potential contestants. How in the world could the network’s three most important talking heads stress culinary expertise as being so important to being a chef on TFN that they then let some nitwit serving raw chicken get through just because of the most vapid of reasons – appearance?
Hell, after that I was surprised the short, heavy-set, Korean chick lasted as long as she did! (And not because she was caught lying several times to judges and fellow contestants. Remember, TFN no longer considers integrity when making money is possible.) I can only assume that the four white kids eliminated in weeks one thru four were to thin the herd enough to make it look like TFN was being fair.
This year’s winner was barely a surprise, but if you look at the “pilots” the winner was clear: stay at home mom Melissa D’Arabian was a little better on camera than professional chef Jeffrey Saad. What was not a surprise was who was eliminated prior to the finalists being announced. The young black woman, the gay guy, and the Korean never had a real shot. Honestly, considering the failure of the Finley win, I am surprised that TFN went with the mom than the pro, especially with their “culinary points of view.”
Saad would have hosted a show around introducing viewers to a new ingredient from a far off place. D’Arabian’s show is cooking tips for working Moms. “Old hat but better on camera” beat out good show idea but less “warm” on camera. While I am happy that a non-professional beat out the pros, it bothers me that she is now saddled with a boring show premise. Judge Susie Fogelson said that she learned a lot from D’Arabian’s pilot – a quick chicken and sauce dish – which leads me to believe that Fogelson has never watched any shows on her own network. The chicken dish was a basic skillet chicken dish with sauce that I learned to make when I was about 12 years old. Her muffin tin gratin was a nice trick, but it was left completely unexplored, the focus being the chicken.
During the pilot presentations, camera cuts showed the viewers the most condescending, fake, and uninspiring reaction shots from the selection committee. Comments from Tuschman and Fogelson left me with the impression that two of the key TFN executives wouldn’t know olive oil from Playdoh. They also cannot seem to find a way to not come across as blindingly fake, and totally without integrity.
Everything about the choices made during season 5 screamed stay safe! I might have actually learned something from Saad. I have a better chance of learning parenting tips from D’Arabian than cooking techniques, and that’s a shame. D’Arabian is likeable, and I’m sure somebody out there will watch her… For now. I have a feeling though that her show will never get out of the Sunday morning relegation zone, and that she’ll soon be gone from the network, replaced by NFNS season 6′s “winner.”
Saad, however, may soon be the next star on the Travel Channel or Discovery Health, joining former NFNS contestant Nathan Lyon, who wasn’t as exuberant as Guy Fieri, but ended up a star – on another network – with a show focused more on teaching than entertainment.
TFN is proving that it no longer cares about teaching cooking skills, or even teaching techniques. In fact, they clearly no longer care about the viewers. Why then would they be stealing so many show ideas from the Discovery Channel instead of working on original ideas? There’s no way you can convince me that Adam Gertler’s Will Work for Food isn’t just a knock-off of Discovery’s Dirty Jobs, or that Jeff Corwin was signed to be the FN version of Andrew Zimmern. TFN is also heavily advertising a new show, Chefs vs City, which is a very thinly masked rip off of CBS’ The Great Race and Travel’s Man v Food. In fact, one of the first challenges presented to the contestants in Chefs vs City was a Phaal Curry challenge taken on by Man v Food host Adam Richman last year.
For some reason, former TFN icon Mario Batali is still a part of the introductions to Iron Chef America even though Batali has not done any work for the network in over a year. In fact, Batali’s standing with TFN was made clear when they rejected what is a perfect show for the network. Spain On the Road Again was mostly a food-centric travelogue and barely a cooking show at all. TFN’s rejection of it, and Batali in general, means that Batali is now the latest PBS star, and he joins Ming Tsai and Sara Moulton as TFN ex-pats doing better shows on PBS.
Alton Brown is now the only teacher left in the school, and how long will it be before he decides not to re-up his contract? It’s common knowledge that one stipulation of a FN / Personality contract is that the network maintains copyright over everything the personality does, including book deals.
From treating minorities like programming filler to eschewing actual kitchen skill in favor of surface appearance, and from all but stealing show ideas, the Food Network is proving that if you want serious, thoughtful and instructional cooking shows, you had better hope that PBS doesn’t go anywhere.
The chicken is now in your pot, Food Network… Prove me wrong.
