Cooking shows: entertainment primary, food secondary.

While every country has its own signature cuisine and specific tastes, one common thread persists across the globe: People love to watch other people cook.

Though nutritionists lament the fact that all over the world people are cooking less (even culinary hotspots like Italy and France are breeding noncookers), food-themed shows are enjoying increased international success. Unlike the instructional cooking shows of yore, today's shows focus on entertainment first and cooking second.

If French-accented Julia Child's show on U.S. public TV can be credited with making do with pots, pans and a stove pushed into a TV studio, Tennessee-based Scripps may be responsible for this new trend. In 1993, Reese Schoenfeld, a co-founder of CNN, founded the Food Network on the idea that rather than just educational and instructional, cooking was equally about entertainment. Food Network, and other inspired-by-Food Network shows start from the premise that everyone's in a hurry (which seems to increasingly be the case all over the world) and that no one knows how to cook.

Mark Gray, vp of Programming at FremantleMedia Enterprises, explained How dispensing easily-followed instructions helped make British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver--one of his company's hottest properties--so successful. "He showed a simple way of cooking and really demystified it," Gray said. In fact, the name of Oliver's first BBC TV hit was The Naked Chef, referring to the simplicity of his food.

Long gone are the days when TV chefs like Julia Child instructed eager future chefs on how to butterfly chickens. Today, viewers all over the world are looking to be entertained, and if there's food involved, well, that's an added bonus. Detractors refer to this new phenomenon as "food porn," because of its aesthetically pleasing and sexy images.

In the beginning of this programming trend in the U.S., TV personalities migrated to cooking shows (e.g. Emeril Lagasse's Food Network show). Now, cooking show personality Rachael Ray has taken it to the next level, adding a successful CBS Paramount syndicated talk show to supplement her Food Network appearances.

The Food Network has now all but fully weeded out the old school expert chefs in favor of younger, flashier hosts. One that immediately comes to mind is Giada De Laurentiis, a young, attractive chef (and granddaughter of Italian filmmaker Dino De Laurentiis), who hosts TV series Everyday Italian. According to Anna Alvord, director of International Development at Scripps, "Giada's shows [which also include party-crashing series Behind the Bash] are by far the most popular internationally."

Alvord also mentioned the global popularity of Ace of Cakes, in which a very non-traditional chef host constructs anything-but-ordinary confections. Additionally, Rachael Ray series 30-Minute Meals, which instructs viewers how to cook healthy food fast (without resorting to fast food), is popular in fast food-fearing countries. "There are just so many places where people are time-starved," observed Alvord.

On the other side of the Atlantic, FremantleMedia's Jamie Oliver has epitomized the successful, non-traditional chef/TV host. He has been able to parlay his good looks, charming personality and passion for healthy and organic food into a TV cooking empire, which includes books, cooking products, U.K. restaurants and a slew of TV series. "Jamie's work, and his style, have reverberated around the world," said FremantleMedia's Gray.

"The Naked Chef was different and fresh. It showed Jamie cooking in a London flat, then hopping on his scooter to buy fresh ingredients for his dishes. It would all culminate when he'd have his friends over to enjoy what he'd cooked," he said.

Gray said one of the reasons Oliver chose to join forces with FremantleMedia Enterprises (which has its tentacles in many businesses) was because he wanted to expand beyond his TV chef persona into a full licensing campaign.

Since then, Oliver has been blurring the lines between cooking and entertainment, and, at times, community service too. In series Jamie's Kitchen, the celebrity chef instructed underprivileged kids on how to work in a restaurant. Those who succeeded were given jobs in Jamie's restaurant, Fifteen. An Australian version of the show was produced as well, with winners securing jobs at Fifteen in Melbourne. But Oliver's biggest commitment to bettering the British lifestyle came in the form of Jamie's School Dinners, in which Oliver took responsibility for running the meals at a Greenwich school for one year. Disgusted by the unhealthy fare being served to schoolchildren, Oliver began a campaign to improve the standard of Britain's school meals. Public awareness was raised and, subsequent to Oliver's efforts, the U.K. government pledged to spend 280 million [pounds sterling] (U.S.$546 million) over three years on school meals.

When asked whether European viewers--specifically those who take their cooking very seriously--resent shows where entertainment is top priority and food plays second fiddle, FremantleMedia's Gray said, "There has been some surprise and a bit of resistance from some of the European countries. But our celebrity chefs [which also include Fremantle's Bill Granger, Kylie Kwong and Martha Stewart] have inspired imitators in those countries too."

Alvord said her company has met little resistance. "In some cases there are countries that have a lot of cooking shows already and just don't need any more. But generally people are universally interested in watching the creative process. The fact that it's edible is a bonus."

The reason shows produced in the U.S. and U.K. (countries not traditionally known for their fine cuisine) are popular in territories such as Italy and France (well known for their fine cuisine), is attributed to the fact that in those countries the locally-produced cooking shows are all about the food, so the pace is rather slow, and the entertainment value is close to that of a Czarist Russian comedy (translation: not too funny).

Food Network series reach almost every territory in the world. The original 24-hour U.S. cabler also has a sister network in Food Network Canada. The separately operated and programmed channel carries 50 percent U.S. programs, the rest are original or acquired.

Food Network shows are sold individually, as no streaming channels have been licensed yet. While cable operators in the U.S. offer Food Network on-demand, VoD deals haven't traveled internationally. But Alvord stressed, "talks are in progress."

Alvord singled out 2006 as a particularly good year for Food Network shows, which make up about 5,800 hours of Scripps' library, with an additional 250 hours of HD programming and around 135 hours of dubbed Spanish-language programming. The company also boasts in excess of 20 hours of original Spanish-language programming, which Alvord hopes to have available in the near future.

"It always surprises us how international trends are--what's popular in Turkey is popular in Israel and Japan," she said. One particular genre she said is enjoying increased popularity is the food travelogue. Jamie Oliver has taken advantage of this trend, too, with his Jamie's Great Escape series.

Aside from the chefs themselves, those who derive the biggest benefit from the popularity of entertainment-focused TV are the distributors who sell them internationally. "Cooking shows that aren't purely 'chop and chat' shows can be successfully programmed in primetime all over the world," said Gray.

Thanks to flashy characters and side stories, entertainment cooking can go where instructional cooking never could. LCB