Fave TV shows’ unique viewing propositions

NIGELLA Lawson

In the advertising trade, the “unique selling proposition” is enshrined as one of the key considerations for a product or service’s promotional campaign. Quick to latch onto a very good thing for their own shows’ purposes, TV producers have appropriated the operative principle for their own productions’ ends, the better to connect and click with the viewers.

This time around, the principle has been savvily transmuted into the “unique viewing proposition” that makes one show more specifically appealing than the competition.

Take TV cooking shows—there are so many of these inexpensive productions on the tube these days that, for one to stand out and “grab” viewers takes a lot of judicious tweaking.

What are the factors that make viewers decide to watch a particular program about food and cooking, over the scores of other options on view? It’s all a matter of “taste”—instinctively, not just on the viewers’ parts but also relative to what the TV producer-writer-“cook” himself seeks to underscore or emphasize!

Take a look at this extensive “menu” of cooking show titles: “Hottest Home Baker,” “Foodprints,” “Restaurant Start Up,” “Cutthroat Kitchen,” “MasterChef USA,” “Amazing Wedding Cakes,” “Power Meals by the Fat Kid Inside,” “Kusina Atbp.,” “Top Chef,” “Marco’s Kitchen Burnout,” “Nigella Bites,” “Now Eat This! With Rocco DiSpirito,” “Knife Fight,” “Iron Chef,” “Sarap with Family” and “Idol sa Kusina.” What would prompt viewers to choose just one of them, and not all of the other yummies up for grabs?

CHEF Boy Logro

Knowing foodies

A unique viewing proposition that’s proven to be persuasive is the “celebrity chef” angle: Shows like “Iron Chef” with its “stellar” food experts and “Nigella Bites” with Nigella Lawson enjoy an edge with “knowing” foodies over the programs featuring unknown cooks.

In addition, Nigella has the additional advantages of being lovely and sexy to boot—and that suggestive word, bite, in her show’s winking title is an extra come-on, too, right?

So, plus viewing factors include the resident chefs’ stellar status and expertise, “seductive” visuals—and anything else? The prospect of “sharp” or intense competition is another draw for viewers—not that they expect knives to be hurled and blood to actually flow in the course of the “Kitchen Wars,” but conflict is darkly attractive, as lovers of tempestuous telenovelas know only too well!

The cooking show as a “hot” teleserye? Hmm, that could explain the choice of titles like “Cutthroat Kitchen,” “Knife Fight” and “Hottest Home Baker”!

Other appealing plus points include exotic cuisine from less familiar places on the globe, specialized cooking tilts like kitchen competitions for children, famous celebrities as guest cooks for the day or week, inexpensive but delicious and creative dishes, as well as the inadvertent comedy provided by shows like “Idol sa Kusina.”

Filipino TV people and viewers’ penchant and yen for comedy helps account for “Idol sa Kusina’s” popularity, which is boosted by its resident chef, Boy Logro’s masa and street-smart background and cooking-performance style. He loves to lay it on really thick, and we’re not talking only about the sauces he flamboyantly mixes!

It really does take all kinds, but when the resident chef is a slick and sassy homeboy, that gives his cooking show-cum-carnival—a plus-plus-plus!