The 'Delia Effect': Some Thoughts on Delia Smith and the Business of Food Television

Despite the undisputed success of televised cookery all over the world, TV programmes about cooking have not acquired full academic recognition within Television Studies as yet, let alone in disciplines such as Screen Translation that lie at the intersection of Media Studies and Translation Studies. Admittedly, cookery on TV has been studied from heterogeneous angles and has been approached from a number of other academic disciplines: Food Studies, Anthropology and Cultural Studies (see Allen and Albala 366; Ashley et al. 171) just to name a few, nonetheless gastronomic programmes on TV have seldom been catalogued as part of a self-standing television genre. During the last twenty years, since cookery has become more and more appealing to a larger audience and has acquired a more prestigious status, things have been gradually changing and the BBC for example has now a food dedicated section on its website (BBC programmes). Scholars, however, have not yet registered this epochal change. The exponential growth of culinary series broadcast on terrestrial and on satellite thematic channels and the extensive media coverage of food shows indicate that there is a consistent audience demand for the subject, and that huge economic interests revolve around TV cookery, especially for its appeal and consequential advertising capacity. So, why is cookery still so ancillary to television studies? Is it because it is not considered a serious matter? And does that have more to do with gender issues? Or is it because cookery is still perceived as a niche interest addressing small numbers of viewers? Starting from these contradicting premises, the present chapter sets out to further explore some aspects of the TV cookery business. Although the study cannot investigate in depth all cultural and economic phenomena related to food TV for reason of space, it will seek to produce some relevant thoughts on its impact on audiences and broadcasters’ policies.