The Ultimate FoodTV Wine Show

[Rebel Rose]

If you were given a budget, and told to design a wine season for FoodTV (not Fine Dining, Discovery, no no no, it's got to be FoodTV) and if you were told that you wouldn't get paid unless the show was signed for a second season . . .

What would you do?

[Brad Ballinger]

I'd tell Food TV to save their money for the first season and not even do a show. Although wine consumption and consumerism is on the rise, I still don't think there's enough of an audience for a wine show to please advertisers and network executives.

There's still a limited print media audience, and web audience. And a great many of those people look to those sources because the question they want asked is "what wine(s) should I buy?" and not "what can I learn?"

[britcook]

Say thanks but no thanks. Other than in the glass in front of you wine has very little visual appeal, so as far as TV is concerned a glass of Grange doesn't look any different to a glass of Yellow Tail, so how can you explain, in an entertaining fashion, what the difference is without sounding pretentious? Tasting notes or descriptions are inherently dull unless you have some reason for paying attention, and the average viewer is unlikely to have that reason. Couple that with the lack of national (or international) distribution of many of the more potentially interesting wines, so that people could actually buy the product they saw on screen, means your target audience is severely limited.

To get the audience you'd have to get some kind of celebrity involvement, along with "experts" from the business - merchants, makers, growers, sommeliers - in some kind of competitive situation, say tastings "Guess the Grape(s)", name the country/price, find a wine to match this dish, design a label, all old ideas just given a tenuous wine connection.