Sara Moulton's moving to PBS

[MarketStEl]

I'm with Sandy.  Good Eats is probably one of the only shows worth watching on the Food Network these days.  (I'm wavering on Iron Chef America.)

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On further reflection, Sara had said upthread that she thought it was possible to educate and entertain at the same time.

Alton Brown does exactly that on Good Eats. You'd think the Food Network brass would have taken notice.

But if I go any further down this road, this would become yet another Food Network-bashing thread, and we have plenty of these already.

A note for the Philadelphians on this board:

WYBE-TV (Channel 35), the alternative public TV station, makes a point of doing two things:

--Serving metropolitan Philadelphia's underserved audiences, which is why the station's schedule is chock-full of programming aimed at a United Nations of ethnic groups and other marginalized folk, and

--counterprogramming WHYY, providing local public TV viewers with something different to watch at any given time.

WYBE runs cooking shows on weekdays, when 'HYY is busy educating the tykes, for the latter reason. Similarly, when Channel 12 (Channel 64 in Seaford, Delaware; the station is co-licensed to Wilmington and thus Delaware's only VHF TV station) is teaching us to cook on Saturdays, 'YBE runs multicultural programming.

[JanMcBaker]

Thank you all for your encouragement about PBS! It does sort of feel right considering that I started at WGBH in Boston doing prep and styling for Julia in 1978. What I meant by more people watch PBS is that overall it has a larger viewership than the food network. Of course in the food world the place most people want to be is on the food network since it was the first all food network. But it has changed and they would be the first to tell you they are not interested in education, just entertainment (call me silly but somehow I though you could do both). I have a producer friend who tried to pitch them some new shows and he was told, "no chefs please, nobody with any training"

The only trouble is that things move very slowly on public television so it will be several months before we begin taping. I will let you know when I know the timing (and then I will tell you the topic, I am very excited about it)

Meanwhile, oddly enough and maybe only for a few more weeks, I am still on the food network...

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Great! Wonderful to hear that you're going to be on SOMEWHERE! I loved your live show, and I thought you had great guests... I really loved seeing Jessica Harris, and yes! loved being entertained AND educated! I just don't understand that--prohibition-- I'm blanking out on what I think must be a more suitable word here. And wasn't it Food TV that had 'My Country My Kitchen'? I loved that show-- it was wonderful seeing food and cooking from around the world. Anyway, can't wait till you appear again! Good luck Sara!

[rich]

Proof, that in spite of what Leo Durocher once said, nice people do finish first.

Congratulations and best of luck - bring home an Emmy!

[mrsadm]

While I am excited about Sara going to PBS, I also know that my local station purchases very few cooking shows. 

Clearly, what is needed is the eGullet channel.

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the eGullet channel indeed! I vote for that!

I was amazed at the list posted earlier here of all the PBS cooking shows. I must live in PBS backwater land (WSKG, Binghamton NY). We get a few cooking shows - Lydia, America's test kitchen, Simply Ming, Mary Ann Esposito, Martin Yan, and my favorite hunk but I don't make any of his recipes, Nick Stellino.

Again living in the sticks has its drawbacks!

I have always liked Sara Moulton and have recorded her TV shows. I bet the parting from FoodTV was mutual - I am guessing she's not perky enough for them, ala Rachel Ray and the other boobie bimbo's on Food TV.

Sara, good luck on PBS! I will of course record your shows there, too.