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Food Network comeback? With all the press they give Sandra Lee and her schlock instacrap food? Not on your life.

TVFN has systematically nuked all the "stand up" cooking shows which were its bread and butter. In so doing, they have alienated their core audience - the avid cook. There is so little worthwhile programming left on TVFN that most people get their cooking instructional fix from PBS.

I remember in the early 90's making weekly calls to my cable carrier to get TVFN. It was so great back then with people like David Rosengarten and the Two Hot Tamales taking center stage; along with airing the old Julia Child, Galloping Gourmet and James Beard series.

Shows like Iron Chef might give TVFN a shot in the arm but it's going to take a whole lot more of this penicillin and a concerted effort to stay away from junk food like Semi-Homemade to restore TVFN's credibility.

I miss the days of Mario Eats Italy, Jacques Torres, and Gale Gand's Sweet Dreams - those were the shows for people who already had basic skills and wanted to improve them, or just ogle some really awesome food. Hell, even Food 911 was amusing, what with Tyler teaching people with limited skills how to cook. Now the channel has dumbed itself down beyond belief, and the only things I'll watch are Ace of Cakes (Bmore pride!), Good Eats (I love Alton's nerdery), and Iron Chef. Everything else sucks.

KM Nola wrote: I'd like to see more cooking and less drama.

And this is why I don't watch ANY culinary reality TV. I guess The Restaurant (featuring the now credibility-challenged Rocco DiSpirito) ruined it for me. I don't care what the FOH is doing. The only restaurant where FOH means more than the kitchen is Hooters. If I'm going to watch any cooking television, I want to be taught something so as not to have wasted that 30 or 60 minutes of my life.

watchforbears: it was called Melting Pot. Rocco was on it a lot, as was Cat Cora. Padma Lakshmi was on a few times, but they usually featured lots of random people. That was a great show!

Melting Pot! Yes! They should bring that back! :)

I think several of you have captured the sentiment of what I was trying to say, but could not find the words to say: give me television that makes me feel like I have gained something, learned something. Make it worth my time to watch these shows. Help make me a better chef so that I can spread love and pastries and happiness throughout the land! Haha. Or something like that!

I completely agree that I wish they would do more actual cooking shows and less of these reality-type shows.

Also, has anyone seen this new Ingrid Hoffman show? Gag. I was pumped for something Latin-based, but she is so annoying!

I used to watch FoodTv pretty much all the time years ago as well. What I don't understand is why so many "foodies" think that the Food Network executives are a bunch of idiots because they've shifted the sort of programming they have. They know how to read ratings books and they know what kinds of shows are actually garnering them larger audiences. Sure, they might be sacrificing the relatively few people who write on blogs such as this one but they're clearly gaining far more people than they're losing. If you watch the ads that air on FoodTv these days, it's pretty clear that the network is not geared to foodies. Banquet complete crock pot dinners (just add water) was the most frequent ad during some recent program I watched (had to be either Good Eats or Ace of Cakes).

I, too, lament the loss of Mario Batali, Emeril from the early days, Ming Tsai (I know he's on PBS) and the like...but FoodTv is very much unlikely to shift back to those sorts of shows simply because the shows they have on are clearly drawing more people than those previous ones did.