[This is the second of three brief(ish) posts on the experience of being sick, sorta-kinda-like, for four (sorta) days. (Here‘s part 1.)]
So I was sleeping quite a bit. Going online or otherwise sitting at the computer, almost not at all. Beyond that, pretty much, I was on the living-room floor, with The Pooch. Watching daytime television.
Two highlights, if that’s the word, and disregarding all the low spots (like ’50s-game-show re-runs, infomercials, and talk shows/soap operas whose unintelligibility to me would be helped not at all by closed captions, since everyone (including the captioners) speaks a language other than English): (1) the MD show, and (2) the Food Network (daytime edition).
Disclaimer: Yes, I know, I know: this is television I’m ranting about here. It’s not a rant about the great issues of the day, of which there are many. Give me a break. I was sick(ish). When little Billy has a fever or Susie can’t keep her porridge down, surely you don’t rebuke them for wanting to read comic books all day. (Or do you, you wicked old witch?)
I don’t know what network or channel the MD show was on. It may even have been embedded in some larger context, like a CNN “feature news” block or some such thing. The set consisted of a simple dais and a sort of anchorperson’s desk, behind which sat four people. At least a couple of these people were doctors; one might (or might not) have been a nurse, and/or a non-professional medical person at all.
They discussed two topics in the brief moments before I changed the channel:
(1) Which direction to wipe. Yes, that kind of wipe.
(2) Farting, which one of them actually called “tooting.” He said, with a straight face, “It’s completely normal to toot 10 to 20 times a day.” Another offered the detail that a typical adult’s daily output is about a gallon of gas. The perhaps/perhaps-not medical host said it’s a little-known fact that while the gas doesn’t smell good outside the body, when it’s bubbling through our veins it’s very diff—
Click.
About the Food Network, I’m surely not the only (let alone first) person to note the differences between the day- and nighttime editions:
At the outset, the Food Network brought to its audience a wide variety of cooking techniques, cuisines, restaurant reviews, and other food information. After all, food comes with its own rich palette (ha ha, no pun intended) of sensory drama (aromas, mouthfeel, crunch and crackles, and of course tastes). To a foodie, you don’t improve on food or recipes by forcing them into a narrative arc: telling a story with food, let alone dramatizing one, contributes nothing to the food’s appeal. All it does is paper over thin content in a (mostly failed) attempt to be “relevant” or “cool.”
And yet, from the inside looking out, it must have been terrifying to be a Food Network executive a few years ago. You’d read the trade mags. You’d commiserate at cocktail parties. You’d see the statistics — the only genre of TV programming whose audience seemed to grow, and grow fast, is reality-TV programming. (It wouldn’t hurt that reality TV shows are immune to writers’ job actions.)
What can we do with food to make it more real? you’d wonder. How can we make it exciting? How can we make it… make it… competitive? fun, even?
Thus was born “Food Network Nighttime,” as they call it. No recipes. Not counting Alton Brown’s Good Eats, which has always occupied a niche of its own, Paula Deen’s and Bobby Flay’s are the closest thing to “cooking programs” on the nighttime schedule. But even they are tainted. Paula’s Party is to Deen’s real cooking show what Peewee’s Playhouse is to Sesame Street. And Flay’s Throwdown gives only marginal insight to the food he or his competitors prepare.
“Food Network Nighttime” seems to me — I’m no ratings guru, true — a perfect illustration of what goes wrong when you sacrifice a known audience (not growing, but fiercely loyal) in pursuit of an illusory one.
And for true reality-TV junkies, how many of them are gonna switch off Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, The Great Race, or Survivor to watch five unknowns battle it out in Food Network Challenge: Sushi Madness! or The Next Food Jedi (or whatever the topic of the evening is)?
Right: none.
In the meantime, foodies, Food Network’s daytime programming is like Old Reliable. People still cook there, still explain why they’ve made the seasoning decisions they’ve made, still barely get the food to the table before the show’s over (without the artificial “suspense” of juggling a five-foot tower of it to a camera setup*). Get your food processor back from under the counter and put it right up on top — next to your DVR-equipped TV.
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* Well, Rachael Ray’s armloads of produce and bowls and jars of spice and miscellaneous implements come close sometimes. But, well, come on, people: she’s Rachael Ray.
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