One is never proud of watching the Food Network.
But turn on the channel at 11 am or 3 am, someone who isn’t too attractive or too personable is on, boiling water and squishing tomatoes. Watching the Food Network is like placing your brain in neutral, which isn’t so bad every once in a while.
But that strategy isn’t working anymore. The network is losing what little audience it has; some stars, like Emeril Lagasse and Mario Batali, are peacing, and Rachael Ray is limiting her work on the network so she can become the lazy woman’s Martha Stewart.
Mario Batali, who really can cook, doesn't mind being excluded from the Food Network's lowest common dominator strategy:
They don’t need me. They have decided they are mass market and they are going after the Wal-Mart crowd. … [which is] a smart business decision. So they don’t need someone who uses polysyllabic words from other languages.
Yeah, polysyllabic words from other languages does grind our brain gears. Maybe if the Food Network got even worse, things would get better. We could watch that guy from Double Dare explain the history of French Fries all day.
Editorial Director
I park it on FoodNet while I computer in mornings. There new host/shows are dreadfully boring. The spanish chick, Ellie Krieger and the healthy woman make me long for yet another tip from Sandra Lee on how to pass of a store bought angel food cake as something more interesting and home made.
The mood, the sets, host and music are resemble sets in a nursing home. They even changed the film style on Rachel's 30MM, its film quality rather than video tape.
I do like that Guy Fierri's two shows.
it's getting bad i look at the food network every day and i feel i've learned alot they need to make it more interesting but i'm quite sure they will work it out. I love Guy and Bobby Flay and a couple more people don't forget about Paula. My dream is to open my own resturant so that's why I look at the channel so much. figure it GUYS I know you can it's getting boring and alot of repeats.