Selling The Sizzle, Not The Steak

There is a point when, if a cable channel becomes successful enough, it ceases to be about what it is about. You knew MTV was big, for instance, when you were able to turn it on at just about any hour of the day and watch a music video. For some of us beyond the tween demographic, who lost our symbiotic connection with the music scene around the time Kurt Cobain lost his life, the Food Network in the mid-'90s became our MTV. And its equivalent of the single was the recipe. Some of us cooked, some didn't--it didn't really matter....

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