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kudos on Jaques Pepin, I second that emotion.
Ferguson.... I "heart" Offal!
Chris Cosentino.... offal good.....
Alton brown stays !
Marco Pierre White doing something live or like in the UK hell's kitchen.
Thomas Keller YES!
Something like the old Great Chefs Series
Also, Cooking Secrets of the CIA
Michael Symon
Re-runs of Julia Child..... She started me cooking!

I could go on.... I'm glad you asked who would you have on a food network and not "who would have to go and why?" That could have gotten ugly fast!

Add to that list JaquesTorres, Aron Sanchez, Wayne Harley Brachman, Mario, and Gayle Gand.

Paula: her personality alone.
Nigella: I'm gay, but I love her rack and her sensual approach to cooking.
Ina: She's a total fag hag as well as an excellent cook; all the more reason to love her.
Tony: Cynical, snarky and bitchy str8 guy; I HAVE to love him.
Tyler: Cute and an awesome cook. I'm a fan ever since I made his bolognese sauce.
Michael: Good even if he's a bit snobbish.
The Neelys: I like Pat, hate Gina...
Robin: Actually her food is quite good.
Bobby: Cocky, but his recipes are truly good and not too difficult.
Rachael: Annoying as all get out and her food is mediocre
Sandra Lee: GROSS.

I mean Mark Bittman - I love his PBS show.

If I were to start my own food network, conveniently named chisaiFood, who would I ideally want on my programming schedule?

My food network would be named The Resta Us.

It would be alternative programming. Which (overly-liberal-sounding-as-it-may-be) would mean that nobody who was currently a national foodie obsession would be featured. Or if they were, it would be in guises quite different than their norm.

"Cooking with South Park" would be one show. Chef would be the commentator. He would invite various chefs and regular people to his set to show off their favorite recipes. The regular South Park characters would all participate in this as well as "real" celebrity chefs such as Gordie or Tony or Alice Waters.

"My Mother-In-Law's Knife" would be another show. Foodies would be invited to cook with their mothers-in-law on television. The recipe choice would be the mothers-in-laws and they would be in charge of the cooking.

"Moira Tuscanaro the Foodie-Astrologer Cat" might be my favorite on the line-up so far. Moira (who is a cat) would give weekly horoscope advice on what people should cook, based on their astrology signs. Guests would write in with questions like "How do I get my boyfriend to pop the question?" or "None of my friends are foodies like me - how can I convert them?" and Moira would give the right recipes. The guest would then have to cook the recipe as Moira watched from her perch on a high kitchen chair.

Naturally there would be a performance art piece based on food each week, and a dance show where the contestants had to dance in the kitchen while cooking to whatever music the judges happened to decide would be the most difficult for them.

There would be an educational show where the camera would be taken into each classroom at the Culinary Institute of America and left to film as the instructors taught the classes (while in separate clips the cameraperson would be shown lounging around outside the room eating bags of potato chips and Hardee's six-dollar burgers while ogling any students/future chefs-to-be as they walked by).

Bobby Flay would be on it, giving tennis lessons.

Have we forgotten Wolfgang Puck???

Wow! There are some fantastic ideas here! The show where guests are compelled to do interpretive dances while cooking sounds like a riot to watch. I'd love a show where Bourdain gets to talk about anything he wants, to anyone he wants-- uncensored! That would be awesome. (As an aside, I felt really sorry for him last night when he was on Letterman. He was clearly uncomfortable and Dave messed up his show times.)

I'd like Julia reruns, but all of her shows, all the way from The French Chef to Jaques and Julia. That early show was what made me interested in food. "...and that is why we always cook alone," after dropping meat on the floor. She was a fearless cook.

I miss the old shows like Cooking Secrets of the CIA, Great Chefs and The Galloping Gourmet. I miss The Frugal Gourmet, too, even if he was having inappropriate dalliances with his male students.

I would like to hire my instructor from the culinary academy I went to, Micheal Iles, for a show, too. He'd be great!

Of course, Alton Brown. I love his shows. If I ran the educational system in this country his shows would be required viewing for graduation of all high school students. Everyone should know the basics (and then some) of cooking for themselves by high school graduation.

I would keep very few from FN. Alton Brown, Mario Batali, Giada could stay if she toned down the cleavage, Bobby Flay, and even though I'm not happy with his sell out Tyler could stay. the rest of the time I would rerun old episodes of Julia, cause lets face it NOONE gets tired of Julia!

Now see guys, if these were the kinds of lineups I could expect, I'd be glued to the tube. Programming that taught you something, or in the case of @KarenResta and @Susquehanna, provided interesting, real entertainment. I find even the current PBS programming to be a problem. At least in the case of Lydia Bastianich, who in real life is an amazing teacher. They rush so many dishes and they have so many program breaks (for eventually having it hit FoodTV maybe?) that there's really not a lot of teaching going on.

Oh, you know what would be great? Late at night, to have actual lessons given by real teachers on everything from basic knife skills to properly roasting a chicken. You could just dvr and watch whenever. And let me just say that I would whole-heartedly support ANY advertiser who ran during that programming.

I feel power mad. I think I'm forgetting that my food channel is not, you know, actually, umm, real.

I read this question this morning and thought about it nearly all day. (Yes, I do have a life...LOLOL.) You asked - so here goes. These aren't only chefs but show ideas as well.

Historical shows – i.e. Julia Child The French Chef, Company, More Company and various specials she has done. James Beard and his culinary talk show (the guests were wearing really heavy microphones that were worn around the neck…ouch!).

TRY to find some Dionne Lucas footage. She was actually the first television cooking show hostess. She was apparently... ugly and very nasty and her show didn’t last but it’s still part of culinary media history and should be dug up and aired.

Graham Kerr and the Galloping Gourmet. James Barber and his show Urban Peasant. And, yes, I would include The Frugal Gourmet, despite the shadow cast over him. Jeff Smith is largely responsible for quelling my cooking show jones when he was one of the few TV cooks available for me to watch on PBS.

Deeply Instructional Shows – Alton Brown and Good Eats. Give Shirley O. Corriher a show. I’ll bet she’s got an audience. David Rosengarten and Taste.

Get Collette Peters and Nick Lodge to tag team on a serious how-to show on building wedding cakes and whimsical creations. Maybe get Michelle Bommarito (I always thought she got a raw deal on the wedding cake show!)

Ethnic Programming…Daisy Martinez – Daisy Cooks! Bring back the Two Hot Tamales and apologize profusely on behalf of TVFN for burning them out.

Lidia Bastianich, Mario Batali, Giada De Laurentis and Michael Chiarello covering Italian.

Hubert Keller and Jacques Pepin covering French.

Grab Penelope Casas for Spanish.

Ming Tsai for Asian Fusion.

Any suggestions for Greek experts? PLUS, various ethnic specials – like one on Armenian Cooking, German cooking and others.

Martin Yan because he cooks great food, he’s fun and has a following. (He also qualifies for “historical shows” as he’s been around forever.)

Keo Sananikone to cover Thai – his are some of the best Thai recipes I’ve ever used.

Grab Madhur Jaffrey for Indian cooking – she’s got some experience on TV as she sometimes acts. Add Padma Lakshmi for eye candy if you insist but that's as fluffy as I'm going.

See if we can get Rick Bayless for Mexican – and if Diana Kennedy would acquiesce, have a couple of regional Mexican specials featuring the goddess of all culinary things Mexican.

Get someone to cook Jewish specialties and Sephardic cooking. How many people wouldn't kill for a great matzo ball soup recipe?? Noodle kugel?? CHOPPED LIVER?? :D What about a show on a successful Jewish bakery cranking out challah and matzo? Demo the koshering process (at butchers) and how rabbis bless the matzo (at bakeries). Is there any meal more interesting than a Seder?

I'd woo Nigella and Jamie Oliver - don't know enough about Danny Boome yet.

Baking Specialty Shows…Plead with Dorie Greenspan to do a show. Beg on bended knee for Nancy Silverton to do a bread-based show. Crawl on broken glass in pursuit of a Daniel Leader Bread show. Finally, throw rose petals to lure Rose Levy Beranbaum (first show = Chocolate Oblivion Truffle Torte!).

Duff Goldman can do his reality thing as he’s doing now. (I’d like to see more in the way of how-to’s – maybe a second show? Don’t want to Emerilize him! Limit him to ONLY 2 shows.)

Resurrect Gale Gand’s show. And Of COURSE, air Baking With Julia.

See if Nick Malgeri will squeeze my little network into his ICE and cookbook writing schedules (would it make a difference if he knew his gingerbread cooky recipe gets used religiously every year by me??).

Holiday-Based Specials… Get the Italian chefs to do a show on Christmas Eve and Easter (at the very least); maybe St. Joseph’s Day.

Get the Mexican chefs to do something about Day of the Dead. Greek chef (whomever he or she may be) can do Orthodox Easter and get a Ukrainian specialist to do the same.

Christmas Cookies and yuletide goodies from many countries…

Any significant holidays that center around a food celebration would make a good special.

Miscellany…

Some type of beginner's cooking like How To Boil Water - but not lame. Believe it or not, the best incarnation of HTBW featured a comedian and I can't help but think that made sense. A non-cook learning as he goes and showing others it can be done even if you didn't pop out of your mother holding a wooden spoon and wearing a toque.

Kitchen Construction shows. Not fluff and crap and soap operas – not “Extreme Home Makeover.” More like Ultimate Kitchens on Fine Living, but for real people. Not necessarily someone who can spend $10K on a fridge.

A Jeopardy-Like game show. David Rosengarten (before TVFN burned him out) used to host some type of cooking game show but it seemed lame and not challenging enough.

Revive Supermarket Sweep. Revive some type of competition as TVFN had with teams comprised of a well known chef and John Q. Public challenged to make a dish with either certain ingredients or a dollar value limit.

A show featuring an excellent food retailers – i.e. a Whole Foods or Fresh Market or Trader Joe’s, in a specific area – and ethnic markets, i.e. Mazzaro’s in St. Pete or the Oriental Supermarket in Brooklyn and Oceanic Market in Tampa. OMG, don’t forget Gourmet Garage, Dean & Deluca and Eli Zabar’s Vinegar Factory. Can also include stores like Williams-Sonoma and Penzey’s Spice House. PLUS great sources in other cities and towns across the country.

A show featuring famous bakeries.

A show featuring famous restaurants where a TV crew can film the kitchen at work. (Granted, this couldn’t happen on Valentine’s Day but in a decent restaurant, even a Wednesday can be busy enough to be interesting.)

A show featuring COOKING SCHOOLS! Yay! Can also go the “reality” route with this. (There was once a show featuring students at Johnson & Wales that was interesting – enjoyed that one.)

A show featuring SPA COOKING at various spas across the country (and world).

A REAL restaurant reality TV show – on the order of The Restaurant but without the focus on the drama-addicted FOH staff and more attention paid to the cooks.

Bring the BBC show CHEF! to the States and create a culinary sit-com of our own as well. It’s FOOD TELEVISION. There should be a built in audience for this stuff!

What about a catering show featuring Martha Stewart? After all, catering is how she got her start. For catering we could also enlist Wolfgang Puck. Hollywood Awards season is NOTHING without him.

I would totally keep the Barefoot Contessa. There is no disputing her love of cooking and food - and I love how she showers her friends and family with great eats.

A Butchering show with the Lobels. Maybe not from killing the cow but demonstrating how to purchase large cuts of meat and break them down to family-friendly portions. And how many people do you know spend a premium on chix parts because they don't know how to dismember a whole chix??

Some things to stay away from:

Circled R Television. I do not want any show masquerading as a cooking show when it's designed specifically to sell products. As much as I love Michael Chiarello, his Napa Style show is a big advertisement for his grey salt, other ingredients and equipment. You wanna sell something? Buy commercial time.

Garbage Crap Instafood - i.e. Shamdra Lee and her Semi-Homemade schtick. Unless it's promoted as and aired as a comedy with laugh track.

Smack Rachael Ray around a few times and get her back to cooking real food in a speedy fashion. She used to do this in the early days of her show and I think it gave her some great creds. There is nothing wrong with aspiring to get people to the table quickly on a weeknight. The food, however, must be real and teaching acceptable shortcuts is definitely no sin. Maybe during each show she could demo how to purchase and store a different food item? i.e. Chicken breasts from a warehouse store (in a huge package) - filet them and store them in smaller ziplock bags in the freezer? ("You should always label and date the smaller packages...") That day's recipe could revolve around the featured ingredient or other pantry items.)

While I did spend some time thinking of this stuff, it did not take long. I don't know why TVFN can't do interesting and exciting things with people who cook. If I had a food-inspired network, I'd keep it about food. Real food.

Tyler Florence
Sarah Moulton
Ina Garten
Dorie Greenspan
America's Test Kitchen
Mario Batali
Thomas Keller (now that's a dream...it would be so nice to see Thomas Keller or Dorie Greenspan get a show on a network)

First let's assume you don't get current Food network programming, or anything else currently on Television.

I'd get rights to the old Frugal Gourmet shows, the ones before his assistant joined him on air.

I'd try to get rights to the old Taste series with David Rosengarten (unlikely since Food Network won't let anything out of their clutches).

I'd get rights to all the UK cooking/food/historical shows we never see like:

Rosemary Shrager's Cooking School
Victorian Kitchen
In Search of Perfection (Heston Blumenthal's show)
French Leave John Burton Race
Kitchen Criminals
The F Word
The original uncensored UK Kitchen Nightmares
Jamie's School Dinners
Jamie's Kitchen (2002)
Ever Wondered About Food
Cooking in the Danger Zone
The Wartime Kitchen and Garden
Escape to River Cottage
Cooking on the Wild side
Return to River Cottage
River Cottage Road Trip
River Cottage Treatment
River Cottage Forever
All the old Keith Floyd series

A few more for my roster, please - on "The Resta Us" channel.

There would be "Fabulous Food Forums on Parade" - another game show where the contestants must all be active participants in various online food forums. Different tasks would be assigned to the players to show a variety of different skill sets. There would be cooking challenges (such as cooking a live lobster or making a pizza) and other sorts of tests: on cooking terms, on food knowledge, and maybe on just how long any one contestant could talk on a given food subject without boring everyone else. There would be a big red "delete" button that could be hit by the other contestants but if any one contestant hit it too many times that contestant would be deleted (booted off the show) themselves. Naturally the number of times would not be known, so those that hit it often would be sorely tested in this area. Points would be taken off the contestant's game for excessive discussion of Paula Deen or Sandra Lee and anyone who could not stop panting on about Tony Bourdain at endless length would have to sit on a chair that was actually made out of a shellac-ed braised whale phallus.

Next in the line-up is "Food Editors Discuss It". "It", of course, being food - or so we will be led to believe. A roundtable discussion where each week a different set of editors of major food magazines/journals/newspapers would be invited to share their thoughts on food politics, restaurant culture: what is "authentic" in food, and the best way to roast a chicken. No cooking will be done on this show - just talk. But it will be fun, I assure you.

There's so many others I want.

Marcella Hazan (who gave classes in Italy and actually taught one of my friends how to make homemade pasta and marinara sauce)

Lidia Bastianich (who also taught. She held classes in her home in New York. She actually had an olive press in the house. A co-worker went to her classes when she was in high school)

Tamar Haspel (She wrote The Dreaded Broccoli Cookbook and makes wonderful, healthy food.)

@Chiff - HTBW with Sean Donnellen. I loved that show. He and Cathy were really good together and they did pull together decent, easy to make, easy to learn dishes. I haven't liked any other incarnation of the show, but that one rocked.

Thank you, chisai - for this wonderful idea. I have more programs under development and am not at all afraid of being power-mad. So, here they are:

"Cookin' with Mrs. Doubtfire": Saturday morning programming for children. Mrs. Doubtfire will be in the kitchen making huge breakfasts while getting the children on the show to participate in the cooking. When things go wrong in the kitchen (as they do, and we know she can not swear in front of les enfants) her wig will fall sideways or her boobs will fall off and Robin William's deep male voice will ring out to get the ship in the right shape, finally producing a buffet breakfast the size of the Queen Mary which everybody might be too tired to eat that cooked it but which the studio audience will be happy to push their way onto the set en masse to really enjoy!

Another new show this season will be "Pimp my Bodega". In this show we will travel the byways of America, searching for any small Mom and Pop foodshops that could use a bit of help in any way: product choice, food quality, pricing, shop design or cleanliness. Our team of designers, chefs, and discerning foodies will find the most deserving places to visit and tear apart, while wringing their hands and whispering about the eight-year old dust-encrusted cans of pickled pigs feet that can be so bothersome to life as it should be, and other similar food items which exist in some small bodegas or neighborhood food shops. There will be no discrimination in terms of choice - all sorts of Mom and Pop shops with food are free to enter or to be nominated by their neighborhood for the "Pimp my Bodega" show. Money for renovation and operational changes will be raised by a Block Party catered by the "Pimp my Bodega" staff, then this money will be doubled by the show's producers. Then let the fun begin as the shop is torn apart and re-made into a Gourmet Paradise. This will be a heartful, tear-jerking show full of the spirit of giving.

@chiff0nade- Wow, you have some great ideas! FOOD NETWORK, ARE YOU LISTENING?!?!?

I'd completely forgotten about the BBC sitcom, "Chef!" and I can't believe I did, either, I LOVED that show!

Cooking with Mrs. Doubtfire would be a scream to watch!

I hate to speak ill of the (living-) dead, but RayRay has GOT to go! I don't care what she used to do, the product whoring she's done since cancels it out. I'm so sick of her "stoups," "sammies" and teaching people who don't know any better to COOK with extra virgin olive oil that I can't bear to watch her anymore. Honestly, I'd like to slap her.

@chiff0nade, LMAO @ "Instacrap Channel!" That is what it would be if not for Alton Brown and a select few others.

@Karen Resta - You are into that bottle of "Fantasy" again, aren't you?