The Evolution of Cooking for Television

Cooking shows can be traced back to 1920's radio,an era when the topic was likely to be managing a houshold during a time when mechanical refrigeration was at the vanguard and refrigerated transport of fresh food was still 20 years away.Growing, harvesting,canning,pickling and preserving your food was done out on necessity rather than a desire to archive "artisan" status and "slow food" accolades.Fast food would be sought after, not villanized.
The first televised cooking show of note was James Beard's 1946 "I Love To Eat" on NBC.In 1946 most households were without a television set and American cuisine was being transformed from rationing,protein stretching, substituting and making do with less, into the post WW II version of Asian and European influenced,exotic and gourmet home cookery.Beard's fondness for the Asian and french aesthetic and the new availability of fresh food products due to new technology developments in refrigerated transport combined to place James Beard at the forefront of new American cuisine and cement his place as an absolute icon of the 20Th century food landscape.
1963 brings us the next icon on the American food TV scene. Julia Child was initially famous for introducing french technique and cuisine to the American home cook through her cookbook "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in 1961 and, two years later with her pioneering and Emmy award winning television show "The French Chef". Julia Childs combination of intense passion for french cuisine and accessible "made for TV" personalty provided the nexus at which cooking and entertainment would meet for the next 50 years and beyond.
The next 20 years saw a few TV chefs appear on the landscape, as many could be expected considering there were 3 networks and a handful of public and local broadcasting stations.These included Joyce Chen,Graham Kerr,Chef Tell,and Jacques Pepin.
Jacques Pepin's seminal work, La Technique,an essential read for any aspiring chef,prompted him to launch the hugely successful PBS show "The Complete Pepin" which led to many other shows including the highly regarded collaboration with Julia Child "Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home".
At this point cooking shows were relegated to PBS and local stations but with the onslaught of cable the inevitability of widespread proliferation of food shows ,as well as every other type of show, would become realized.
I cant neglect to mention some notables in this period such as, Jeff Smith "The Frugal Gourmet", The "Great Chefs of" series,Holiday Entertaining with Martha Stewart,and "Cooking with Master Chefs with Julia Child".
1993,(the year I started culinary school)The Food Network made it's debut,early slows included : Food News and Views" hosted by then Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's wife Donna Hannover and an up and comer on the TV scene,but a veteran restaurant chef,"how to boil water" with Emerile Lagasse.
In my opinion, Chef Lagasse represents the true genesis of the new American food movement.We can talk about Alice Waters,Jeremiah Tower, Mark Miller and Paul Bertolli,Charlie Palmer,Paul Prudhomme,Wolfgang Puck,Mark Schaefer, etc....Widespread spectator sport American cooking really took off with Emerile.His Band,His BAM!! and his working class attitude,as opposed to the stuffy,uptight de rigueur of the existing cooking shows launched the food network into the mainstream of American consciousness.(part 2 to follow)