Can Food Network Survive in the Age of Netflix Cooking Shows?

[Ubiquitous]

Bobby Flay and Giada De Laurentiis sat next to an empty chair. One at a time,
contestants on Food Network Star came before them, ready to have their dishes
critiqued -- including by a mystery guest judge. That person, Bobby and Giada
revealed, was the contestant, who'd have to judge themselves.

Food Network Star, which just completed its 14th season, once had network
executives as judges, and its prize was an actual show on the channel. Season
two's winner, Guy Fieri, remains one of the network's biggest talents. But
that era is over. Since 2015, none of the winners have actually won their own
show. Instead, they might appear as a guest judge on another show, like
Fieri's program Guy's Grocery Games. So a challenge in which contestants
judged their own performance was a perfect test for the prize the winner
would most likely receive: a seat at a judging table at one of Food Network's
many prime-time competition reality shows.


Food Network still airs instructional shows like Giada at Home and Trisha's
Southern Kitchen during the daytime, but you're more likely to find Cake Wars
or Chopped marathons airing then. Food Network has mostly settled into a
comfortable, familiar format: a competition with a celebrity chef as host,
set in a studio, with contestants facing a time limit. Food Network Star,
Guy's Grocery Games, Worst Cooks in America, The Next Iron Chef, Beat Bobby
Flay, and all of the Baking Championships are essentially the same show,
packaged inside a slightly different twist or theme.

This strategy has become far more pronounced over the last few years, as
Netflix has dished out a steady array of original reality food television:
The gorgeously shot, fastidiously plated dishes on Emmy-nominated Chef's
Table; the zany and fourth-wall-shattering baking competition Nailed It!;
David Chang's deep dives into cuisine such as pizza, fried rice, and tacos on
Ugly Delicious; and Michael Pollan's exploration of food traditions on
Cooked. Its most Food Network-like show is the pastry competition Sugar Rush.

Besides its originals, Netflix has imported the U.K.'s The Big Family Cooking
Showdown and Australia's Zumbo's Just Desserts for American audiences; and it
offers repeats of shows such as Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown and The Mind
of a Chef. It's a wide range of food programming compared to Food Network,
and that's only going to increase with Netflix's plans to launch 50 new
unscripted shows this year.

Allen Salkin, who wrote a book about the cable channel's history, says, "Food
Network almost single-handedly created vast food knowledge in the general
populace in America, and Food Network created a smart audience that wanted
better food programming." But, he adds, "at a critical juncture -- which I
would say was in the last five or ten years -- they decided not to program
for the audience that they created."

As it's doing with scripted shows, Netflix is offering creators and talent
more -- more creative freedom, and more resources. As a result, its
distinctive shows stand out: Nailed It!, a show from the producers of Top
Chef (which has been the premium chef-competition show since it debuted in
2006), cheekily mocks food competitions, in part by having its host, Nicole
Byer, break the fourth wall. "I don't really think it fits in anywhere. It's
really its own little beast," Byer says. "I've never seen anything like it; I
don't think anyone else has, and I think that's why people respond so warmly
to it."

James Beard Award-winning Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat author Samin Nosrat told me
that her forthcoming Netflix series, based on her book, wouldn't be possible
elsewhere. "There was just endless energy toward making my dreams come true,"
she says. "I get to imagine something that looks totally different and feels
totally different. I really got to insist that we show home cooks versus
restaurant cooks, that we have people who aren't traditionally shown on food
TV, a lot of women and people of color."

Food Network's shows are hosted and judged by talented chefs and successful
restaurateurs, but critics of the network say that the shows' formats don't
always play to the chefs' strengths or expertise. As Salkin says, "If you're
having someone like Alton Brown, who knows a lot about food, preside over a
circus, is that really credible food programming?"

Chopped is all about great cuisine, but it's so fun to watch. If it was just
a show about how to cook, nine people would watch it.
Yet the network's strategy is definitely good business. Food Network has two
magazines and a full line of products at Kohl's, and was a key part of
Discovery Communications' acquisition of Scripps Networks, which owned Food
Network and HGTV, among other networks. Kathleen Finch, who now oversees Food
Network, Cooking Channel, and nine other Discovery networks as its chief
lifestyle brands officer, is unapologetic about their goal to entertain a
general audience. "Our job is not to teach people how to cook. Our job is to
make people want to watch television," she says. "When we find talent that
works, when we find a format that works, the viewers tell us through ratings,
and then we just keep making more of it."

Food Network has "hundreds and hundreds of hours of premieres" each year, she
points out. "For us, it's all about 'the audience knows when they want it';
we're always there for them."

For Netflix, the goal is to sell subscriptions, not ads, and it aims to do
that via quantity and scale that will keep its subscribers well-fed. As Cindy
Holland, Netflix's VP of original content, told TV critics at the Television
Critics Association press tour, "Our job is to provide enough variety so that
130 million members find content they love and come back to us every month
and so that we can attract the next 130 million members and beyond."

To fulfill that mission, Netflix may spend as much as $12 billion on
programming this year, though producers who've pitched Netflix say the
process is the same as trying to sell shows to cable or broadcast networks.
Netflix executives don't offer unlimited budgets, and they want programs that
will appeal to their 2,000 or so "taste communities," which are essentially
audience categories -- a more specific, data-driven version of the way cable
networks target people of certain demographics, such as Food Network's target
of women ages 25 to 54.

Netflix, which would not make an executive available for this story, doesn't
release ratings, so we don't know how many people its food shows actually
reach. Renewals of shows like Chef's Table, though, indicate that they're
performing well enough to justify their costs -- perhaps because critical
acclaim and award nominations help bring attention to them, too. Would a show
like Chef's Table, with its quiet, meditative approach, even work on ad-
supported cable, where it would need more than a niche foodie audience to
survive?

Salkin wishes that Food Network would at least try. He points out "how rare
it is that Food Network takes a gamble," and says that if the network tried
new shows and "fails, and then it doesn't get ratings, okay, fine, I'll give
them a pass." But, he says, the "ever-present ethos of Food Network of going
for the lowest common denominator and refusing to spend real money on a show
is keeping them in the gutter of food programming, rather than elevating them
to where Netflix has shown the format can go."

Discovery's Finch says her priority with Food Network is clear. "My single-
focus job is to bring as many people under the tent as possible, and we do
that by making our shows entertaining. Chopped is all about great cuisine,
but it's so fun to watch. If it was just a show about how to cook, nine
people would watch it," she says. "I'm not in the food business. I'm in the
television business."

--
Let's go Brandon!