From Scratch

by Allen Salkin

  Barry cobbled together a loop of strung-together food show pilots and one original thirty-second spot.

  “It’s another day in America,” that thirty-second segment of the loop began, a cheerful narrator echoing Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign commercial, “It’s morning again in America.” The segment opened with a shot of a schoolhouse topped with a rooster weather vane, dissolved to generic shots of a woman putting a sprig of lettuce into her mouth, a boy eating pizza, and a man biting into an ear of corn. “And before it’s over,” the narrator cooed, “two hundred and fifty million people will eat nearly a billion meals, each in their own way. Whether it’s a hearty country breakfast, lunch on the go, an afternoon snack or a quiet dinner at home, there’s a place you can turn to help you make it a little easier, a little healthier, and a lot more fun. The TV Food Network: It’s all you need to know about food.”

  The loop, put out on a satellite signal before the deadline, would only hold space for so long. They vowed to beam original content to cable providers as soon as they had it. Reese, Joe, and Jack discussed announcing an official start date when a regular programming slate would go out. They agreed that the Monday of Thanksgiving week would be best because it would provide a theme for shows to follow in the buildup to the biggest food day of the American year. Jack took out a calendar. “Only problem,” he said, “is the Monday of that week is November 22.” The three men were all old enough to well know that November 22 was the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. This would be the thirtieth anniversary, not an auspicious date to start a network, especially if you wanted media attention. They decided on Tuesday, November 23, 1993.

  —

  Reese gave his wife, Pat, the job of finding a permanent home for TVFN. There was no way to get a lease signed and a studio built in time for the launch date, so Reese set about establishing a temporary home for the first few months. F.O.R. Susannah Eaton-Ryan found Unitel Studio, at 503 West Thirty-third Street near Eleventh Avenue, in the grungy blocks near the Lincoln Tunnel. A squat, beige brick building darkened with car exhaust, it had a tiny bit of office space and a small stage to shoot rudimentary talk shows, but no proper kitchen.

  The area was a well-known hive of street prostitutes. When Sue Huffman phoned her husband, Jim, with directions to pick her up one night, she warned him, “I just want to tell you, there’s a hooker right out in front of the door, and when you pull up, she’s gonna think you’re pulling up for her. So just a heads-up.” Ricki Stofsky, the producer, took to referring to one pimp as Jiffy Pop because his hat looked like the expanding foil cover on stovetop popcorn. Some of the young staff grew used to nodding hello to the prostitutes they’d see at the McDonald’s on the corner, one of the only places nearby to eat. Jiffy Pop sometimes greeted them with a suggestive, “Hi, how are you doing?” as if he were looking for recruits.

  Reese, starving for content, made deals for vintage episodes of Dione Lucas’s 1950s cooking show and The Galloping Gourmet. Graham Kerr owned his own rights, so the negotiation was easy. Dione’s rights were owned by Art Modell, the farsighted owner of the Cleveland Browns, who had helped create Monday Night Football. Modell couldn’t believe his luck that someone wanted to broadcast black-and-white cooking shows, but he was not going to give them away. TVFN paid $180,000 for two years of broadcast rights for Dione Lucas, $75,000 for The Galloping Gourmet, and $125,000 for episodes of James Beard’s old cooking show, which had been thought gone but were unearthed. To freshen these “classics,” Saturday Night Live veteran Jane Curtin was hired to come to the new headquarters and tape introductions. Susannah, who oversaw the shoot, was astonished at how much white wine and how many cigarettes Jane managed to consume during the day. Explaining for cameras that viewers were about to watch Dione roast a chicken and then, after a pause, that viewers had just watched Dione roast a chicken was clearly not Jane’s favorite gig ever. Even if it was not Reese’s intention, the inclusion of these shows managed to establish a genetic link between revered names in the world of food and television and the new channel, as if TVFN was setting itself up as the keeper of a gourmet flame.

  “I had Peter Kaminsky and Sean Kelly as writers. We decided that every chance we got, we were going to insert a potato joke. . . . For one show, I had to talk about a dish that was larded liver. It was so disgusting to me. I thought this was horrible—people shouldn’t be eating this. It got to the point where I didn’t want to talk about food anymore. It was like joining a cult, all the focus on food, the discussions about food.”

  —JANE CURTIN

  As November 23 approached, when 6.5 million homes would be set to receive it, TVFN broadcast practice episodes of Food News and Views and a talk show, Getting Healthy, shot on the news set on West Thirty-third Street. Also on the schedule was another show Reese believed crucial to the network’s success, TVFN’s version of Larry King Live, a 10 p.m. showcase where celebrities and newsmakers would stop by the studio to chat live about anything food-related, called Robin Leach: Talking Food. Robin had seen rats outside the building. But he was so appalled to see rodents inside the studio the day he made his very first show that he asked the main cameraman to pan on the vermin. To Robin’s recollection, one of the first shots that went out on the Television Food Network was of rats scurrying across a black floor.

  As large a personality as Robin was, no one mistook him for a food person. It was pretty much blind luck that TVFN had brought David Rosengarten aboard. What it had landed in him was someone with a deep and geeky affection for food arcana along with a thespian’s hammy tendency to turn everything into a show. In many ways, David’s marriage of fine cuisine, ego, and vaudevillian showbiz schmaltz would set the tone for what viewers experienced of the network in its early years. Unmistakably, David knew his stuff. Viewers could see that, and he was helped by the addition of food-obsessed people like Doris Weisberg, who once led eating tours of Greenwich Village, and Dorie Greenspan, a respected cookbook author. Both produced some of the earliest shows and delivered the idea that the channel might be a bit schlocky, but it was serious about food.

  On November 22, the night before the network’s official debut, some of the talent indulged in dark humor and off-color gags as they taped their last practice episodes—which went out for broadcast that night to an untold number of cable homes across the country that were receiving the signal in advance of the announced start date. On Food News and Views, Donna smoothly delivered the information that the average cost of a Thanksgiving dinner was up by a dollar. The camera switched to her co-anchor. “In a related story,” David read, allowing a slight smirk, “since a rabies epidemic has crippled the raccoon population on the East Coast”—bad news it would seem—“turkeys have flourished. And that’s good news for the holidays! Wildlife experts in upstate New York say they are seeing more wild turkeys this year than ever before. . . . About eighty to ninety percent of the raccoons have died.”

  Later, a story about thieves raiding a Thanksgiving food pantry in St. Louis was followed by the item that Pepsi had signed a five-year agreement with an airline. And so the day’s food news unfolded until David started a segment on the popularity of different brands of frozen waffles. “Well, it may not be long before Kellogg is saying, ‘Leggo my Eggo . . . ’” David paused for comedic effect. “Market share, that is.”

  Robin Leach was worse on Talking Food. Much worse.

  Reese had installed Robin Connelly, who had called Emeril “a hunk,” on Robin Leach’s show as his sidekick. To avoid the on-air name repetition, she adopted the stage name Kate. Some excerpts:

  ROBIN: We are getting so close to Thanksgiving here. I wanted to deal with one of the major problems that I have at Thanksgiving which is, how do you really give it to old Tom Turkey.

  [Kate laughs politely, Robin whistles and makes a pop noise with his mouth.]

  KATE: I would never have thought you would’ve had a problem with stuffing, Robin. But, anyway, I’m gon
na show you a very neat trick.

  ROBIN: I do, because it’s a big bird.

  KATE: Uh-huh. Yes . . . ?

  ROBIN: I’m just a regular guy.

  KATE: [laughing] Regular guy. Faced with a big bird.

  ROBIN: Yes.

  KATE: Yes. Well I can see why you might be nervous about that. So I’ve got here, our friend . . .

  ROBIN: Tom!

  KATE: Tom.

  ROBIN: Tom!

  KATE: Ooh! Tom’s a little damp.

  ROBIN: Tom’s a little wet. . . .

  KATE: Yep. Stuff it, go ahead. Go ahead, put some in there. Give it a try.

  [Robin takes a huge fistful of stuffing from bowl, even though there’s a big spoon in the bowl.]

  KATE: Oh, Robin!

  [Robin puts some in the bird, removes his hand, shows he is making a fist, and then pounds it in. Rhythmically.]

  On November 23, there was a celebratory party at the Rainbow Room above Rockefeller Center. Mayor-elect Giuliani was there with his wife. Curtis Aikens, who had taped his shows in Nashville and not met his comrades, was intimidated by being around a big celebrity like Robin Leach, and tried avoiding him until Robin recognized the star of Food in a Flash, cornered him, and boisterously declared, “Curtis! The pay’s not well, but the party’s fantastic, so let’s go for a ride!”

  Reese was fuming because TVs at the Rainbow Room weren’t tuned to the network. Later he gave a speech and thanked Joe, but said that Joe could not be at the party because “as usual, he is back at the studio making sure everything is going okay.”

  Joe, who was at the party, heard that and thought, I really should be at the studio in case something goes wrong, and dashed back.

  It is a testament to how seat-of-the-pants it was that the tapes from the first day’s shows have gone missing. According to the best recollections of those who were working that night, the first show officially broadcast on the channel was the hourlong Food News and Views. In it, Donna mispronounced “ragout.” Instead of saying “ragu,” she gave it two words, “rag” and “out.” The producers had to do a second take or risk losing credibility. “We can’t put that out on the air as the first episode,” someone declared.

  On the cover of that week’s TV Guide was a shot of the actors starring in a reunion of The Waltons, and the magazine did not mention the upstart food channel, nor include its offerings in the listings section. A TVFN press release touted the network’s new stars, including “the Engagin’ Cajun,” Emeril Lagasse, and Gayle Gardner, host of a live call-in show about health.

  During the following days, the content on the network settled down—slightly. Food News and Views featured a phone interview with someone from Butterball discussing how a turkey should be cooked. An on-set guest was Abe Lebewohl, the owner of 2nd Avenue Deli, who brought a huge platter of sandwiches and discussed the finer points of corned beef. For the first few weeks, the big food news story that Reese wanted David and Donna to own was recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), a controversial chemical used in the cattle industry. Experts on cow biology were interviewed daily on the air. As time went on and the mainstream media did not take note of the important journalistic work Food News and Views was doing, Reese turned off bovines and onto credit card fees charged to restaurants. He argued that restaurateurs would find it essential viewing. Bursting into the greenroom one night where the anchors were prepping, Reese bellowed, “Did you see the news about MasterCard? MasterCard lowered their restaurant fees by an eighth of a percent! This is big. We’ve got to really play this up. Give it emphasis!”

  “Going on the air that first night and knowing that everybody had said, ‘You can never pull it off,’ we stuck a chicken bone in their throats. We went on the air and did it.”

  —ROBIN LEACH

  To break up the hard news during broadcasts, there were light features like an illustration speculating what the cast of the network sitcom Friends would look like fat, and a recurring humorous debate segment, based on the CNN show Crossfire. It pitted David’s old Three Men in a Kitchen sidekick Tony Hendra, a food conservative, against author Barbara Kafka, a food liberal. It was called Rhubarb. Typical topic: bison as food. Kafka was pro, Hendra con: “Why not eat roadkill?” he asked.

  Robin Leach was a central character in these wild proceedings as the first weeks unfolded, often rushing beerily onto the set seconds before air, straight from Madison Square Garden a few blocks east, where he’d been watching the Knicks.

  Once when the actor B. D. Wong was a guest, Robin insisted on referring to him as “a Chinaman,” as in “How does it feel to be a Chinaman in Hollywood?”

  B.D. was livid, but tried to act with class, asking, “Well, if you mean what is it like as an actor in my culture. . . .”

  Robin dug in. “No no no, I mean, as a Chinaman.”

  Whatever preposterousness Robin brought, he hit his marks. Reese’s affection for him was unflagging, and he consistently brought in celebrities. Author Paul Theroux came in to discuss his book Millroy the Magician. Singer Judy Collins stopped by, as did Francis Ford Coppola.

  Despite the uneven content, Reese and his ragtag troops were thrilled that they had gotten a television network on the air in a matter of months. Now that TVFN was broadcasting, there would be a brief chance to take a breath. It was far from profitable, faced deep skepticism from investors, and was chaotic, but word of its existence was slowly spreading.

  Less than three weeks after the debut, the staff, after working nearly around the clock, held their own low-key TVFN Christmas party at Landmark Tavern, a bar fifteen blocks uptown.

  —

  Reese and Joe were still trying to secure rights to broadcast old episodes of Julia’s original WGBH series The French Chef, and they still didn’t have a deal for Julia to contribute essays to the news show. The French Chef rights were half-owned by WGBH, and Julia was entitled to 50 percent of the rights fees.

  The TVFN team thought they had an advantage because Henry Beckton Jr., the president of WGBH, was on the board of the Providence Journal. But Beckton recused himself, and turned over the negotiations to his assistant at the station. The ProJo board authorized Reese and Joe to offer a million dollars to WGBH for the rights. Unfortunately, Beckton’s underling had a boyfriend who was a chef, and he told her that Julia Child was worth more than a million dollars, and WGBH turned down the million-dollar offer without asking Julia whether or not she would like half a million dollars for her old shows. Soon after the network launch in November, Julia asked Reese why her programs weren’t on. TVFN now offered WGBH half a million, and Julia urged WGBH to take it. The deal earned Julia $250,000, and led to her agreeing to appear occasionally on the network, generally on Food News and Views segments, as Sue and Reese had suggested over dinner in Cambridge.

  Reese needed ideas for shows to produce in-house once they moved to their permanent headquarters, where they would have kitchen facilities and could make real cooking shows. That January, David managed to get Reese’s attention for a few minutes.

  “I have an idea for a new kind of cooking show,” David began.

  David had been useful on Food News and Views, Reese thought, keeping Donna happily in harness. David was not terrible.

  “Okay. The typical cooking show,” David continued, gushing forth before he lost the famously impatient Reese. “The first third is appetizers, second third the main course, and the last third dessert. It’s a menu. But listen. How many people do you think watch that thirty minutes and then reproduce the menu? Very few, you know. Five percent or less. So you are wasting the structure of thirty minutes. Why should the menu govern your structure? Why don’t we find another way to take advantage of thirty minutes? Okay. So my show will take either a dish or an ingredient and spend the whole thirty minutes on that ingredient. Or dish.”

  There was one second of silence. Reese told David, “Th
at sounds good. When do you want to start?”

  David couldn’t believe what he was hearing. How could this be so easy?

  “I don’t know. March?”

  “Okay. We’ll have Josh White produce you. Go talk to him.”

  David floated out of Reese’s office. Wow. He had a cooking show. A show of his own! He could have an entire episode on how to properly batter seafood for frying!

  Three months later David was preparing to tape his first episode of the show named Taste. He was setting things up on the counter in the studio, nervously going over his lines in his head, the beats of the show.

  Suddenly, a door opened and silhouetted in the light was a six-foot-tall female figure.

  David glanced up, but at first did not recognize who it was.

  Then he realized. Dear God, he thought. Today?

  It was Julia, visiting the network for one of her segments. David was nearly paralyzed as she strode up to his set.

  “Oh, what are we cooking today?” she asked.

  “Well, er, uh, Julia, we’re, I’m, ah, doing a show about bruschetta.”

  “Oh, very good. Show me what you’re going to doooo.”

  David began demonstrating how he was going to chop some tomatoes and other toppings for toasted bread. Then he showed her his choreography, moving to the oven and saying, “And then through the magic of TV . . .”

  Julia’s eyes widened. “I HATE that stupid expression! The magic of TV. It’s bullshit!”

  “All right. Sorry. I’m sorry,” David stammered, trying not to drop the tray of finished bruschetta. “I won’t. I won’t use it again.”

  “I’m sure you’ll do fine.” Julia turned and walked out of the light.

  —

  Haphazard as the assemblage of the talent had been, most shared a belief in the importance of good food for a good life. Robin and other stars were flying around the country trying to sell small cable operators on carrying TVFN. In Dallas, Curtis, who had learned to read and write at the age of twenty-six, met with the owner of Marcus Cable, Jeff Marcus, and pledged that people like himself and Emeril really cared about the transformative power of a family meal. “This is about trying to use television to make people’s lives better,” Curtis said.