cooking @ home

The Food Network (FN) is a strange animal. I liken it to my cat. My cat does what she wants. She’s sweet one moment, a disaster the next. She shows surprising brilliance usually as well as amazing acrobatic skills. At other times she takes her favorite little ball and purposely sticks it under the sofa and pushes it so far in so she can no longer get to it any more, to her own detriment. She’ll also make a jump from the floor up to the window, a move she’s done thousands of times, and every once in a while inexplicably misshoot it and fall to the ground dazed. Silly cat!

She’s often entertaining, my cat, and overall I do adore her. But quite often she gets in wild and weird moods, running around the house super fast and going no where, scratching things she shouldn’t. and behaving in ways just plain annoying and which make me wonder just what is going through that furry little mind of hers.

And the same goes for the Food Network, all of it. Like my cat, I overall adore it, but I’ll call my cat out when it’s bad and reward it when it’s good. So any of you foodies who thinks I’m picking on FN just for the sake of it, you’re woefully mistaken. And I’ve just explained why. And now, with that in mind, let me start some jeers.

First let me introduce the over all theme: Food Network needs learn to match it’s marketing campaigns (repeated commercials) with its actual programming and stop confusing (and annoying) everyone.

Jeer #1: The Iron Chef who was then wasn’t there

Apparently who ever does the commercials doesn’t seem to know what’s actually on the programs. And vica versa, the shows don’t seem to know what’s being promoted. What happens is one giant confusion.

Let’s take the most glaring single example of late, the first two Iron Chef America’s (ICA) of the new season. The week after the new Iron Chef Michael Symons wins, he does his first real gig in Kitchen Stadium. Perfect timing. (Good kitty!) There was no wait; FN got him off the bench and into action a week later. Plus it’s the timing of that episode, Battle Thanksgiving, was of course perfect being four days before said holiday (again, well done, and well-thought out). I do have one qualm over that particular show, there was some weird editing in this episode that was just awful, namely the flash forwards so we could get disjointed reports on final creations before they were ever made that were majorly confusing and very annoying (bad, kitty).

Ok, then the next week (this past Sunday) we have the second new ICA episdoe of the season with Cat Cora taking on a challenger. Oh, but wait, the opening of the show and there’s now only the four original Iron Chefs. Huh? What of Symons? Apparently, two weeks after his winning and he doesn’t exist. Yes, a single week after he’s actually performed his initial duties and after over nearly three months of hype, he’s gone! Call out an APB … for ICA’s producer’s brain, that is. Or for whomever is in charge of “Food Network Continuity” … sorry, I’m laughing my self silly here, for obviously such a position cannot possibly exist.

What makes this even worse is the constant commercials … “a new Iron Chef has joined the Pantheon of greats … the five of them stand ready to take on all new challengers … all new shows, tune in now”. And then the Cora battle episode, a brand new one, with no Symon. Come on, FN! Get on the stick. Stop being the paragon of food one moment and then acting like a cable-access basement show the next.

Obviously you filmed this before he won, but are you saying you can make a six-part series, you can have him on, you can do all this timing perfectly, and yet you’re too lazy or stupid to do a 10-second edit fixing him in the second show of the seasons title??? Sloppy sloppy. Very erratic.

FN, you couldn’t “pull another Cora edit”? Anyone who’s watched Iron Chef has noticed the flags in the background change from one moment to the next on the intros, as if by magic. Cora isn’t there. She is, she isn’t. And when you see a closeup you’ll notice she’s never seen with any of the other three chefs in a single take. It’s slick editing. Nothing wrong with that. Quite understandable and very well done. …. So why couldn’t you take the time out and do that with Symon??

And all while the commercials running before and after that say otherwise. Meanwhile the home audience is sitting there confused. Is this a new one? Is this an old show? FN is the master of leaving it’s core audience dazed and confused, and here is a prime example. Big boo.

Jeer #2: “We answer your questions” means “buy our gear!”

Isolated incident? Hell no. Part of a pattern of confusion. Like my kitty, one moment, poetry in motion, the next moment, making an easy jump and falling on it’s head dazed.

Very confusing and ultra annoying was the November advertising campaign. Again, like all FN campaigns these commercials show every 10 minutes between almost every lick of show time. If I had to get out a calculator. Eh, let’s just say six times every hour 24-7. It’s so omni-present you grow quickly sick of the commercials if you dare watch two hours in a row. Which I often do. Have the remote handy for the mute button for the ads I say.

November was “We Answer Your Questions” or something … I think they called it “Dear Food Network”. So, silly me, expects to see a bunch of different mini-specials along the lines of the “Food 911″ show premise throughout the month. After all that’s what the six times per hour commercial “promises.” Nope. There was one. And yes, it was a goodie with several of the different stars showed up at folks homes and helped out with their Thanksgiving dish problems. Again, the show itself, very nicely done. But the build up was “we answer your questions all month long every night” was complete horse manure.

What actually did go on all month long was the same four Guy Fieri commercials where he stands in the street, asks someone what Turkey Day cooking problem they needed to over come, and the answer to each one was ? Buy Food Network’s cookware line. Grrrrr! So a confusing somewhat deceptive campaign that was so omnipresent you couldn’t avoid it, and a one hour pay off. And the every night part was every day and every night shilling their merchandise. Very very loud and resonant boooooooooo!!

Jeer #3: Stuff that annoying “holi-dazzle” up your turducken!

More confusion for December? Of course the trend continues. But I do want to quickly say and say this once. I can live with the tagline of “Seasons Eatings”. It’s cutsy. It makes sense. But what is with this “Holi-dazzle” crapola??? I would love to say if I hear it one more time I’m going to puke. Sadly it’s on (as said) six times every hour for the next 21 days. To which I can only reply: “I hate you.” Like when my cat got her claw stuck in my good shirt and put an unrepairable three inch rip in it. She might be my darling, but at that moment I think: “I hate you”. The same thing I think every 10 minutes (and for the next 21 days) that I have your network on and hear that stupid insipid saying.

Jeer #4: I’ll have some tiramasu, hold the cold sores

Oh, FN, could you maybe start screening your advertiser’s before airing the commercials? I’m talking about where I’m watching a cooking show, it goes to a commercial. I’m looking forward to seeing how the dish turned out. Meanwhile, here’s a commercial for some food. Yummy. Here’s a commercial about some more food. More yummy. Then I have a woman on the screen with a big canker sore peeling it off and saying to go buy her pharmaceutical cure. Now back to looking at how that brisket turns out. Ok, I’m not puking, but I am hacking. My stomach’s making groaning noises. I no longer want to see the brisket. I think I’ll go out and rake some leaves now. A lip sore commercial amongst all that food? Come’on! Stop dropping the ball. Yet another way of repelling your audience. Think, people, think!

Jeer #5: Confusorama: Where reruns and new shows collide

Ok you ideas people there at the Food Network, tell me something. If you can come up with something (so inspid but different) as “holi-dazzle” how come in four years you can’t think of a name of a special that doesn’t sound exactly the same as every other special???

Witness the confusion: “All-Star Holiday Spirit”, “All-Star Holiday Party”, “All-Star Holiday Gifts”, “All-Star Holiday Cookies”, “All-Star Desserts”, “All-Star Dessert Battle”, “All-Star Holiday Dishes” … Two of these specials are new, the others are the reruns (though good reruns) from previous years. Can you look at those and answer correctly which are which? Of course not.

The commercials all promote the new one and suggest that is what you should be looking for. The ear catches the name “All-Star”, turns on the TV that evening, and you sit there and blink, wondering why you are watching the same one you saw in 2004 again (and it will be shown eight more times between now and Christmas too), and didn’t they just advertise all day long about a new one tonight??? Then you begin to see the repeated pattern the next day and the next night, and you start to realize — especially after all of last month’s “Dear Food Network” malarky, that what they say isn’t what they actually do, and you start to ignore what they say.

Added to this already messed up confusion is that “All-Star Dessert Battle” and “Iron Chef America: Battle Sugar” are two names for the exact same show. Yeah this is where you start hitting your head on the desk repeatedly and going “why?!”

What are you going to come up with in the coming years if you continue this theme while exhausting recipes? “All-Star Holiday Side Dishes”? “All-Star Holiday Uses of Olive Oil”? “All-Star Holi-dazzle Cold Sore Sharings”?

Oh and I am not going to “do my homework” here and look these up to get the correct names. I’m going to go by my mixed up memory just to prove how (I need a new word for confusing …) jumbled-up these specials get. Now in the past couple weeks I’ve seen “Rachel Ray’s 30-Minute Thanksgiving”, “Rachel’s 60-Minute Thanksgiving”, “Rachel’s 60-Minute Thanksgiving – Part 2″ — Hello? I didn’t see these shows but isn’t that a total of 120 minutes or are these two different meals? I have no idea at this point. And the other night I saw listed something like “Rachel Ray’s 60-Minute Holiday Meal” which I guess is (cough) supposed to differentiate Christmas (or maybe it’s Columbus Day, that’s a holiday too, you know) from the Thanksgiving one.

Why am I so critical? A network that deals with creativity. Television programming and cooks and chefs that day-to-day deal with creativity, yet Food Network can only come up with names that all sound the same and run into each other in a totally incoherent mess? Jeers city!

Continued pattern of confusion leads slowly to mistrust

It’s misleading. It’s confusing. And it’s a pattern of confusion, repeated in new and dumb ways. If you wanted to get nasty you might say deception. Yes, it is deceptive. How much is intentional or how much is lack of thinking is the only thing that stops me from full out calling it deception, but it’s getting there. You see, the slow creeping thought of mistrust starts entering the picture after a while, and that, Food Network, you seem oblivious to realizing.

The fact is, you just never know what you’re going to get on this television network. The viewers start to think like this …. There’s a new iron chef, but he’s not even mentioned on that night’s show as ever existing after two months of nothing but. There’s a new show on tonight with the whole line up, or is it the one from 2005? There’s specials all month answering our questions, or is there actually a single special and 5,000 iterations of FN schlocking their cookware at Kohls commercial? After a while you don’t know what to believe and you start to pretty much not believe in anything they tell you. Or, more appropirately, take whatever they say with a grain of salt. No doubt sea salt. And that is the problem. The Food Network has a way of shooting itself in the foot time after time again and ruining it’s credibility. And can you really afford that, FN?

Especially can you afford to do this when your history of reality competition shows have mysterious and enigmatic (to be polite) elements tied to so many of them? When you have had production disasters on the Next Iron Chef that were never mentioned. That no one seems to know what happened to your first Food Network Star (or in that case stars)? And while everyone stlll wonders why the switch at the end of the last Food Network Star season (I’m talking the return of disqualified Amy, not the leaving of JAG). And do you think anyone has forgotten that the “go vote all week, go vote now for your favorite new star” commercials were running, but the voting on the website mysteriously closed early — it was shut down by Thursday afternoon for a show that was not having its finale until Sunday night?

And does anyone ever wonder what happened to season one of Iron Chef America whose episodes never never air — especially while all the other ones have been shown many many times and no doubt will continue to do so in the future? And why after all the money spent to make them were all ten episodes shown not over three months but a single weekend and then never seen the light of day again? What happened there? With such strange history as this can you keep making these other blunders constantly and remain untarnished? Doubtfully.

Food Network: Scarecrow or tin man?

Seriously, Dear Food Network, you do so much right and then you do so much needlessly wrong, and or confusing. You draw in and then manage to repel your core audience. You’re my cat who jumps on my lap and purrs — then hears a bird singing in the tree or a car backfire and jumps off my lap taking a part of thigh flesh with it.

Call me a romantic, call me a dreamer, maybe even a bit of a sucker, but I do want to believe in you. I don’t, but I wanna. I think as television networks go you’re probably the rarity as you seem to actually have a heart. Mind you, a heart at a television network and a subdivision of a global multinational information and entertainment empire is pretty rare, but I think you do have one. I think you mean to be sincere and genuine. Which is why it’s painful that you’re your own worse enemy. And again if I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be booing so much. It’s tough love, essentially. And you need to shape up and stop confusing and putting off the audience you think you’re embracing.

I said I think you’re a network with a heart. And so let’s finish this off with a cheer that goes towards proving it.

Big Cheer: Well done with your SOS campaign!

Television networks will rarely support a cause. When they do, it’s always something timid. Stop doing drugs. Read a book at the library. And when the do these, it often comes off as self-serving public relations is the intent more than the actual project or cause. So with that as the precedent, I have to give a huge and enthusiastic cheer to Food Network’s big promoting the Share Our Strength (SOS) movement to end childhood hunger in America. A perfect match and well-match core demographic, people who want to hear about this and who are the right ones to participate. Keep this kind of thing up. It shows you do care. More importantly it’s the right thing to do.

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