As a food blogger, I constantly encounter posts on other bloggers' love or hate or love/hate for the food network and its stars. Since I do not watch the Food Network, or enough TV for that matter, I can't really comment if the adulation and criticism is justified.

However, very recently I've read a deal about this that I thought would be interesting to share with readers. Two bloggers reacted to the article TV DINNERS: The rise of food television. on the New Yorker by columnist Bill Buford.

Some insights:

Girard became president in 2001. When I met her, the following year, she was fifty-six, with blond hair, a slight build, an easy manner, and nothing to hide; frank but not theatrical, calm to the point of seeming tranquillized, no flash or fast-talking speech about "a vision thing," which I now suspect was because her job had been so simply defined: make the bottom line work. She wasn't interested in James Beard Awards or good reviews; the only press that mattered was in the financial pages, because her allegiance was unwaveringly to "her community"-the investors.

As an aside, we also get to read about how Julia Child inadvertently signed herself up to a TV show:

... on a February morning in 1962, when Julia Child, having been asked to promote "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" on a book show on WGBH, the Boston public TV station, phoned ahead, asking for a hot plate and permission to involve the show's host, P. Albert Duhamel, a Boston College professor, in a demonstration. The professor couldn't cook, and, on live television, Child was going to teach him how to make an omelette-a brazen flourish for a novice food writer. Russell Morash, at WGBH, remembers the call, because Child was so unusually well spoken and patrician in manner. It was as though he'd picked up the phone and found Eleanor Roosevelt on the other end. Child was a "hoot," according to one of the twenty-seven viewers who contacted the station afterward-enough for it to find funding to prepare a three-episode pilot that would eventually become "The French Chef."

Now on the reactions from two perspectives, at the Accidental Hedonist, Kate seems to agree with Buford when she says "the Food Network is more about promoting an unattainable lifestyle than it is about promoting food".

On the other hand, the Dethroner takes the opposite stance in In Defense of Food Network:

Shows like 30-Minute Meals and Everyday Italian are designed to give folks a few ideas and inspiration to actually skip the drive-through for an evening and try cooking at home. They're speaking to the skill level of the modern homemaker.

Again, the disclaimer is that I have only watched a few snatches on the Food Network but with what I've seen I get the impression that food is promoted more like a product for that "perfect lifestyle" and about "using food to impress other people" as Kate succinctly put it.

However, I find value in teaching basic cooking skills, well perhaps not for people who know their way around a kitchen, but for novice cooks and those who are really clueless. I see the practicality of having regular programmes that lead you by the hand be it on knife skills or menu planning.

My take on this is a bit of middle of the road and I'll be brief about it. Food Network isn't the only channel that offers food and cooking shows. There seems to be a consensus that PBS has a better mix. However, back on topic, I think much as the Food Network offers 'lifestyle' shows, it might also be to their best interest to include more serious food features. By catering to the 'popular' the network has succeeded in alienating a good majority of its loyal viewers. It's a shame that there's a Food Network but when one needs accurate, reliable and in-depth information on food, viewers have to look somewhere else. The Food Network has failed to be the one-stop (shop) channel on food, which is a shame.

Now, I understand very well that for a network, profit is the bottom line. It matters little if what they broadcast all day, everyday amounts to just a bit above something you'd throw in the compost heap if it means big bucks.

But then, media is supposed to have a conscience. It has to be responsible in its programming. I am sure they can find a balance between information and entertainment if they so wish.

Or is that wishful thinking on my part?

[Food Network photo from www.bfeedme.com]