Grilling and Shilling on The Food Network

Posted by bluepiano, August 3, 2008 at 1:09 AM

This year's Next Food Network Star showed that the FN has given up on maintaining any semblance of integrity or credibility. One entire episode was a commercial for Red Lobster. Now they've gone beyond product placement. A sponsor can virtually buy an entire show. Just as bad is Guy Fieri. His "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" is supposed to be a love note to quirky, regional, family run restaurants. Yet he's out there shilling for TGIF, a homogenized, standardized, national corporate chain, the exact kind of place thats destroying the diners and dives he's supposed to be championing. You can say that's him as acting as an indiividual, not FN, but contracts can be written that require network permission for endorsement deals. The bottom line is that the FN wants their hosts doing this kind of thing, because it only increases the network's marketability to advertisers. Not surpisingly, as the product placement and cross promotions have ramped up, the quality of FN programming has gone down. Can anything reverse this trend?

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