New Planet Green Kills Off Discovery Home; Several Cooking Shows Gone

Canadian Chefs, Marcus Samuelsson, News, Opinion, TV Food Shows: 0 Comments; 05 Jun 2008 ©2008 Harry Kenney I am surprised and very very annoyed on a couple levels. I knew from many months ago that Planet Green was coming. Turns out it's one of the very first posts I made here, that Emeril Live was through production on the Food Network and that the Cajun with the Big "E" and "bam" was starting a new summer time show on a new summer-time launched channel called Planet Green from the Discovery network. I had no idea until yesterday that it was ever going to replace another channel. I thought it was a new addition. Never ... {More...}

As Next FN Star Returns, High Expectations for Season Four

Opinion, TV Show Reviews, The Next Food Network Star: 1 Comment; 31 May 2008 ©2008 Harry Kenney I have high expectations about this year's The Next Food Network Star. That's not to say I don't have my fingers crossed. And that's not to say I'm not fully prepared to be let down. Let me put this another way: My normal modus operandi, the way of operating I've found best works for me in life in these situations is not to get overly high expectations and then be let down. Much better to have lower, more reasonable ones and then events either tend to meet that average or, when things work well, exceed ... {More...}

Opinion, TV Food Shows, The Next Food Network Star: 2 Comments; 29 May 2008 ©2008 Harry Kenney Now, what was supposed to happen, was the folks at Food Network were supposed to release 10 video interviews that were then going to appear here on this site, two each day for the entire week so you could see and meet the contestants of the upcoming -- Sunday night, in fact -- Next Food Network Star (NFNS). You know, similiar to what we did with Top Chef, except that we had no problem with the Top Chef crew making things available, and so when we did it with Top Chef it was a great week-before send ... {More...}

Gordon Ramsay, Opinion, Rachael Ray: 0 Comments; 19 May 2008 ©2008 Harry Kenney I only discovered this "show in a show" at the very end (thankfully). Apparently for the past bunch of Mondays, The Rachael Ray Show has been having a cooking competition called "Hey, Can You Cook?". This morning was week four of four and the day they crown the winner. Apparently it began with five contestants and we lost one each week. If you're that interested in a chronology of events, visit the link above. Otherwise, for me, I'm just talking about the last show ... because if I had to actually look ... {More...}

Hell's Kitchen, Opinion, TV Show Reviews: 0 Comments; 07 May 2008 ©2008 Harry Kenney You know, over the years, and espeically this one, there's been a lot of talk about how Hell's Kitchen is faked, scripted, edited to trick, you name it. Here's just a couple. First from a blog: Kitchen was never quality TV—it was never even quality compared to other reality TV shows. But now it's almost unbearable. Almost every second of it is over-the-top, and many parts are quite obviously scripted. And another from a magazine article: Gordon Ramsay's cooking show on Fox, Hell's Kitchen, has been widely panned for a number of elements that seem staged and disingenuous There's ... {More...}