V I D E O • A G E Se p t e m b e r/ Oc t o b e r 2 0 0 9 12 BY LAUREN GITLIN No one will argue that a study of the history of television is synonymous with the study of pop culture over the last halfcentury. In food and television writer Kathleen Collins’ debut book Watching What We Eat: The Evolution of Television Cooking Shows (2009, The Continuum International Publishing Group, 278 pages, U.S.$24.95), the scribe explores a specific genre of programming as it’s moved from its nascent stages on radio to its golden era on public television to its current saturation point, on niche cable network Food Network and primetime reality shows like The Restaurant and Hell’s Kitchen. Collins writes: “More than just a howto or amusement, cooking shows are a unique social barometer. Their legacy corresponds to the transitioning of women at home to women at work, from eight- to 24-hour workdays, from cooking as domestic labor to enjoyable leisure, and from clearly defined to more fluid gender roles … We are ardent consumers of food, of television, and of the products springing forth from both.” Collins breaks her book into three main sections: the advent of television, the rise of TV chef Julia Child on public television and the development of the Food Network in 1993. She touches briefly on the birth of cooking programs on the radio, as represented by Ida Bailey Allen’s show and Aunt Sammy’s programs. These shows served the dual purposes of instructing housewives on how to improve their culinary craft and shilling for sponsors like PET Evaporated Milk and Crisco shortening. What began as a radio phenomenon in the U.S. took naturally to the newly emerging television medium, appealing to the stay-at-home wives itching for companionship and counsel on how to better tend their hearths. This was the era of James Beard’s I Love To Eaton NBC and the proto-Martha Stewart, Dione Lucas, a prim, Cordon Bleu-trained chef who struck fear and awe in the hearts of home cooks with her death-defying kitchen tricks on CBS. As the role of the show’s host became more central, the idea that these shows were purely educational began to fade and the first glimmer of our modern concept of cooking as entertainment was hinted at. Of Dione Lucas, Collins wrote, “Though she was a real woman undertaking real tasks, she was transformed by the magic of TV into a performer.” In 1954, NBC launched what is arguably the prototype for today’s modern talk show, Home , a show that “addressed the traditional homemaking segments — gardening, fashion, beauty, home decorating, child rearing….” By the ‘60s, local cooking programs had all but disappeared in the U.S. as primetime slots started getting clogged with national network content, and public television stepped in to handle the fallout. Public TV (PBS) became the go-to hub for cooking shows like Julia Child’s The French Chef . Begun as a local public television program on Boston’s WGBH, The French Chefgrew out of a chance promotional gambit for one of classically-trained Child’s cookbooks and went on to become the definitive cooking show of the modern era. The pilot episode aired in 1962 and was an almost instant hit. The meteoric success of Julia Child can be at least partly explained by the simultaneous interest in French cooking, which was ushered in during the Kennedy administration and also in part owed to an American middle-class more interested in foreign travel than ever before. But a good portion of Child’s appeal lay in her earthy good humor. She charmed audiences with her warts-and-all approach, and took “the bugaboo” out of cooking, especially French cooking, which heretofore had been viewed as complicated and reserved for the upper classes. Her influence on mainstream cooking extended to a deeper knowledge of ingredients that are now taken for granted, and kitchen utensils and equipment that, in the ‘60s, were still novelties. Child also engendered the phenomenon of elevating chefs from lowly service-people to artists and celebrities, emphasizing that their work commanded respect and adulation. Her later program, Master Chefs , predated the Food Network’s focus on characterdriven cooking programs with chefs and personalities at the center of the action. The far-reaching fame and influence of Julia Child would never have been possible had she not found a home on PBS, which afforded the freedom to experiment and take risks without network heads or corporate sponsors voicing concerns over her looks, appeal or lack of commercial suavité. It was Graham Kerr’s 1970s hit Galloping Gourmet which truly bridged the gap between Child’s breed of edutainment and the Emeril Lagasseesque character-driven shows of today. Kerr’s program, which originated in New Zealand before being snapped up by CBS for American audiences in 1968, was the first to use an in–studio audience and “hidden cameras” that gauged audience’s reaction to the food. By the end of 1969, the show was on 102 local TV stations in the U.S. and had 100 million viewers worldwide. Kerr credits his wife Treena, who produced the show, with pushing him to entertain and focus on showmanship more than cooking. To her, food and cooking were dull and needed livening up. “You know, people have worries, but to make them laugh for a little so they can forget, that’s what I felt Graham needed to do. Especially with such a boring subject.” As interest in ethnic cooking grew in the ‘80s, so did the demand for shows like Cajun Chef Justin Wilson’s programs on PBS and Jeff Smith’s wildly popular The Frugal Gourmet . The cult of celebrity that surrounded chefs like Wolfgang Puck and Alice Waters kept growing, setting the stage for the creation of the Food Network in the early part of the ‘90s. Smith became the first true brand, attaching his name to lines of knives and signing on for product endorsements on a scale that had not been seen before. Collins describes the phenomenon: “As television audiences grew savvier and more demanding, and competition grew fiercer, producers had to craft a complete package to ensure that they would come, as The Frugal Gourmetdid.” The germ of the idea for the Food Network was born when Providence Journal Company president Trygve Myhren charged his program production manager Joe Langhan with doing some research to determine which niche categories would work for a cable network. In his studies, Langhan discovered that interest in food and cooking was at a premium. “I didn’t know anything about food, but I understood … that it was an attractive business proposition. It costs very little to produce television cooking shows in comparison to other kinds of programs, and there’s an enormous amount of advertising available.” It was originally called TVFN, or Television Food Network, and it was slow to start, with shows like the Emeril Lagasse-fronted How To Boil Waterand the MTV-style In Food Todaystarting off on shaky ground. It wasn’t until 1996 that the network started to settle into its rhythm. When Erica Gruen took over as president and CEO that year, the Food Network was being given away free to cable operators, which was unheard of in basic cable television at the time. She endeavored to “shift the programming emphasis from people who like to cook to people who like to eat.” That shift from programming for people who love to cook to programming for people who love to eat has carried us into the modern era, in which food programming takes every shape imaginable, from the travel-centric shows like Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations and Rachael Ray’s Tasty Travels , to competitive cooking shows like Top Chef and Hell’s Kitchen, to scholarly studies of the science of food like Alton Brown’s Good Eats . The profusion of shows reflects the infinitely specialized approach to entertainment that is currently at the fore with regard to TV programming and media in general. For the media-savvy or the food enthusiast, the idea of discussing food in television is a no-brainer, and indeed, much of what Collins covers in her tome is not revelatory. There are certainly a handful of interesting anecdotes she relates that the average layperson would enjoy, specifically with regard to the very early days of cooking shows and the all-but-forgotten reign of TV chef Dione Lucas, but much of what she writes is either repetitive or obvious, and at the end, one finds oneself craving a deeper look into the topics she just barely touches on. Ultimately, while exhaustive, Collins’ research suffers from a lack of perspective. What do all these disparate factoids tell us? What’s the whole picture? Why, as NY Timeswriter Dawn Drzl points out in her review of the book, are we still so fascinated with watching people cook, regardless of whether we ourselves do so, or aspire to do so? At its core, Collins’ book provides an embarrassment of information but does not bother to synthesize it to create a satisfying conclusion. Perhaps, since she ultimately seems to credit public television with the biggest and most lasting influence on the TV cooking genre, she might’ve stuck with that area specifically, as this is indeed the richest and most detailed portion of the book and would likely have benefited from an even more tailored treatment. B o o k R e v i e w Cooking On TV Makes For A Simmering Historical Stew
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