Innovation and Derivation in Canadian Food Television Programming

Abstract

The 1980s neo-liberal political agenda, which deemed media market liberalization necessary to stimulate programming innovation and expand audience choice, reshaped Canadian television programming, prompting a new round of debate over the quality, distinctiveness, and value of domestic TV shows. Yet producers’ transformation of the daytime cooking show into a popular, lucrative food lifestyle media segment received little critical attention. Thus, part 1 of this article draws on foreign and domestic food show examples, popular with Canadian audiences, to highlight three program innovations that underwrote Canadian food audience expansion over the last 25 years: an intensified focus on eating, entertaining, and aesthetics; production of celebrity chefs and commercial synergies; and reliance on global reality TV formats. Part 2 analyses two seasons of Dinner Party Wars, an exemplar Canadian food show. Reliance on the global trends outlined above renders DPW largely indistinguishable from foreign TV food fare. So too did DPW put in circulation common middle-class, neo-liberal fantasies—turning home entertaining into a public spectacle of competition; finding fault in weak performances of entrepreneurial spirit; taking participants’ inability to achieve restaurant standards of productivity as signs of laziness; and failure to conform to middle-class manners and tastes shocking. Yet within participants’ menu choices and interactions with experts a distinct narrative of Canadian multiculturalism is found.