Cable made the Food Network possible. It was invented in 1993 by Reese Schoenfeld, a co-founder of CNN, who was convinced that its natural audience was women - millions of them.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Nobody believed the 'Food Network' could last. Even I was short sighted and thought to myself, 24 hours of food on TV? They'll run out of things to talk about in four days! But that wasn't true. 'Food Network' continues to get better and evolve.
I remember the Food Network when it was first starting out: Emeril Lagasse and all those people who helped make it when it was on a shoestring budget. It actually encouraged me to start cooking.
'The Food Network' was just starting in New York, and I was getting lots of attention from Mesa Grill. They had no money, so if you couldn't get there by subway, you couldn't be on. It wasn't like TV was something I really wanted to do - but I knew it would be great publicity for my restaurants.
The feed was probably the biggest innovation in social media of late. But the interesting thing about a feed is that the more content you consume, the farther in time you go.
Did I ever think about TV stardom? I don't watch a lot of TV. I wasn't even aware of the phenomenon of what was going on in food television, what you started with the Food Network.
I think cable has been under-appreciated for its contribution to society.
Prior to 'The Shield,' basic cable was just a wasteland of reruns and NASCAR. When we came along, I think there was a collective, 'Hey, if they can do that, why can't we?' from the basic-cable networks of the world. We ended up being the cornerstone for a network, and a great one.
Food is the new Internet.
Television networks are a lot like automobile manufacturers or anyone else who's in commerce. If something out there catches on with the public... I guess you can call it 'market research.'
What's amazing is that the Web enables you to build a kind of channel that wouldn't have made sense for cable, in the same way cable enabled you to build content that wouldn't have made sense for broadcast. You couldn't have done CNN with the broadcast networks; you couldn't have done MTV with the broadcast networks.