When a News Network’s Best Show is on Cooking and the Host Dies
By Kevin Price, Editor at Large, USABR.
CNN is in the process of airing the final season of Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown this coming fall. This, after 11 seasons, in one of CNNs most popular shows and it’s presenting the legendary CNN Original Series in a unique way.
The show was always different among CNN programs. Sure, it had an informational dimension, but it was not a news program in the traditional sense of the word. It was a cooking show with an international flare. With the passing of its host, this leads to a serious void in CNN’s lineup.
According to the LA Times’ Steve Battaglio, “only one episode — a trip to Kenya with W. Kamau Bell, the host of CNN’s United Shades of America — was completed before Bourdain’s death. But it will be the last to have Bourdain’s written narration.”
According to TV Newser, “Four other episodes will be set in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, which was de-facto the stomping grounds’ for the legendary chef and storyteller who took his own life on June 8 in Strasbourg, France.
Ad rates for Parts Unknown were among the highest on the network. TV Newser, quoting Per Standard Media Index, states “in the first half of 2018, commercials on original episodes of Parts Unknown (first-runs / non-repeats) sold for an average of $8,601, the most of any CNN program.
Others are set on the Texas-Mexico border, and the Asturias region of Spain and Indonesia. The episodes will be completed by the directors who filmed them for the show’s production company Zero Point Zero, Amy Entelis, evp of talent and content at CNN who oversees the network’s original series and films, told Battaglio. They’re using audio of Bourdain gathered while shooting on location. Follow-up interviews are also being shot to help tie elements of the programs together.”
Battaglio writes:
“The penultimate episode will have cast and crew talking about the making of the series, utilizing outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage. The last hour will be devoted to ‘how Tony affected the world,’ Entelis said, drawing on fan reactions to his program and sidekicks and friends who appeared on the series. There are no plans to draw on the show’s archives beyond the final two episodes.”
With Parts Unknown coming to an end after so many years, the network will need to do some serious soul searching. It will leave a huge gap in the network’s line up and the network itself. Bourdain was the show itself and was greatly loved by the network’s staff. As far as the business side of the show goes, it typically dominated and was usually number 1 in its time slot among younger news viewers. Few CNN shows dominate their respective time slots these days, but Parts Unknown certainty did. There are also few things more coveted than that young demographic that is often very illusive to CNN.
RELATED: If You Haven’t Seen It, Watch Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown”
The program has also attracted a younger, more upscale audience than what CNN traditionally draws, and its audience isn’t as politics/Trump-obsessed as many other cable news viewers are. For years, the media industry mocked CNN as the “old guys” network, captured in its once most prominent face of the network, the now long departed from the company, Larry King. Sure, Bourdain was not young, but he knew how to relate well to a younger audience. How well did he relate? In the last year, 20 million people who tuned into CNN Original Series shows had not watched any other news programming on the network, according to Nielsen data.
Ad rates for Parts Unknown were among the highest on the network. TV Newser, quoting Per Standard Media Index, states “in the first half of 2018, commercials on original episodes of Parts Unknown (first-runs / non-repeats) sold for an average of $8,601, the most of any CNN program. According to Battaglio, CNN relied heavily on the program during slow breaking-news periods, running it 166 times from Oct. 1, 2017, to June 14, 2018.”
Sure, it had an informational dimension, but it was not a news program in the traditional sense of the word. It was a cooking show with an international flare.
Parts Unknown was also very well received by the media critics. It has been nominated for 6 Emmys this year. As it heads into its final season without its leader. In the series’ history, Parts Unknown has received 31 Emmy nominations in total, winning five times. It also won a Peabody Award in 2013, the year it launched.
It has to be painful enough that one of the Cable News Network’s (CNN) most popular shows had nothing to do with news. It is excruciating, on so many levels for the network, that the host of that show has passed away.
Kevin Price is Editor at Large for USA Business Radio and Host of the Price of Business show, which is nationally syndicated. It is one of the longest running business shows in the country. The Price of Business is a strategic partner of USA Business Radio.
