The Cooking Channel: More Options For Your 24-Hour Food Cycle

If you like your food on your television screen as much as you like it on your plate, you're in luck. Debuting Memorial Day, May 31st, the Cooking Channel will provide non-stop food television, featuring new shows by Bobby Flay, Emeril Lagasse and Rachael Ray. If this sounds a whole lot like another 24-hour food channel called the Food Network, that's because it's brought to you by the same people. Scripps Networks, which also owns the Food Network, had initially said that this second channel would focus on information and instructional programming. But with the Food Network's ratings up significantly last year, Scripps has recalibrated the Cooking Channel, adding more entertainment.

"When you see Fox lining up its third Gordon Ramsay cooking show in prime time, I think food's arrived as a mainstream genre," said Jon Steinlauf, the senior vice president for ad sales for Scripps Networks. The Cooking Channel replaces the low-rated Fine Living Network, a lifestyle channel. In addition to the Food Network poster children mentioned above, the Cooking Channel will also import a few hosts from Food Network Canada, including Chuck Hughes, Roger Mooking and Laura Calder. Maybe it was part of some Vancouver Olympics programming deal. Your poutine recipe, our hockey team.