You Can't Taste Television

I thought this blog post about Hell's Kitchen was great, although the blogger, Nick Fox, seems a little starry-eyed about reality TV, especially when it comes to celebrity chefs. Great chefs don't make TV. Great chefs make food. When you become a TV star who's regularly watched by people who have no intention of cooking a meal (ahem), you're officially a celebrity chef, and you have to choose your place on the continuum. Are you about the food? Or are you about the brand? I think Ramsay cares plenty about food, but it's also clear where he lands on that continuum.

Ramsay runs a business, and he knows his brand. His role is to be controversial, to be devil-may-care, to feud publicly with someone somewhere, and to be ruthlessly intolerant of anything that doesn't come up to his standards. You might be able to be ruthlessly intolerant without throwing plates and hurling insults, but it wouldn't make good television, and your brand recognition? Well, it doesn't take an adman to tell you that notoriety is worth cash. Just ask Paris.

If this product isn't your style, don't worry--the brand has something for you. Try "The F Word," the program Ramsey shrewdly introduced to flog the "softer side" of Gordon. You know, like the Sears campaign. He does very little yelling at the nervous would-be-chefs, spends time with his children, teaches women who can't pick the oven out of a lineup how to prepare a meal for their friends and family (he laughs at them occasionally, but he doesn't yell), and even loses with surprising grace when challengers prepare a tastier dish than he does (almost every week--the challengers quickly discovered that desserts are Gordon's bete noir).

Hell's Kitchen is just one product. I don't know for certain, but I'd say the whole brand has a healthy bottom line. And after all, you can't taste television.