About three weeks ago we told you about three new Food Network shows. One of those, Cooking for Real, already started airing two weeks ago. And we’ve also mentioned before about Bobby Flay’s new grilling show, Grill It! coming in June.

But is that all? Heck no! You see there are these things called The Upfronts which Wikipedia describes as: “In the North American television industry, an upfront is a meeting of television network executives with the press and, more importantly, with major advertisers. It is so called because it signals the start of an important advertising sales period, allowing marketers to buy commercial airtime ‘up front’, or several months before the season begins.”

And just the other week Food Network (along with the rest of its sibling Scripps Channels) did its upfronts — covered by Broadcasting and Cable — which for you and me tell us what shows they have planned. So what are they?

• Feasting on Waves, a nautical successor to Alton Brown’s food travelogue, Feasting on Asphalt.

• The Chef Jeff Project, an inspiriational series in which drug-dealer-turned-chef Jeff Henderson works with kids who want to be cooks.

• Eat the Clock, an “Amazing Race”-type road competition centered around food

• An untitled show — which we strongly believe is a cooking / recipe show, not a food travel show and not a food challenge show — fetauring Alex Guarnaschelli, chef at the New York restaurant, Butter.

• Food Sleuths (current working title), a food-mythology show that will seek to answer culinary questions like whether chewing gum sticks to one’s intestines when swallowed and whether food that has fallen on the ground is still safe to eat if retrieved within five seconds. And …

• Chopped, food competition program that will pit four contestants against each other to find the nation’s top sous chef.

This last one sounds like part gamble, part desperate attempt to reclaim terrority. May I be the first one to snarl this before anyone else? — this could quickly become known as “Not So Top Chef” or the “Middle Chef” show. But we’ll be fair (we always are) and see how it is when it comes out and judge it on it’s merits. I’m rooting for it to be good.

{15 Apr 2008}