June 12, 2024

What Top Cooking Shows Do Viewers Consume?

Cooking programmes have amassed impressive viewer numbers and achieved award-winning status, but declining trends encourage efforts to revamp and rebrand. By Ching Wai.

World - Cooking programmes offer a wide array of content - from competitions that keep viewers on the edge of their seats, to the more relaxed, step-by-step shows, well-known and amateur chefs alike bring entertainment onto screens around the world.

Although cooking programmes are not doing well on the video-sharing platform Youtube with an engagement rate of 0.5% as of the end of 2023, the genre experiences impressive viewerships and ratings elsewhere on streaming platforms like Netflix and TV channels.

The reach of cooking shows is no small accomplishment. Masterchef has a viewership exceeding 250 million, becoming the most watched cooking show worldwide. The British reality cooking competition series has seen many reproductions around the world, including American, Australian, and Singaporean versions. The most recent production companies include Shine TV and Ziji Productions for the British version; Endemol Shine North America for the American version; Endemol Shine Australia for the Australian version; and Beach House Pictures and Motion Content Group for the Singaporean version. The judges for the shows include celebrity chefs like Gordan Ramsay, Gary Rhodes, and Graham Elliot.

Hell’s Kitchen has been broadcast in over 200 territories worldwide. The cooking reality competition series is produced by A. Smith & Co. Productions and ITV. The American version starring Gordan Ramsay has an astounding 24 seasons, while the British series has four seasons. Ramsay himself has had a cumulative audience of about 200 million viewers worldwide across all his cooking shows.

Other cooking shows with global records include The Pioneer Women with about 1.1 million viewers each episode, Julia Child: Cooking with Master Chefs with a reach of over 100 million households, and Iron Chef being adapted and translated into local versions for international audiences.

Netflix’s top watched cooking shows so far for 2024 include Nailed It hosted by Nicole Byer and Jacques Torres, global food series Street Food, and Ugly Delicious hosted by David Chang.

In the U.S., about 9 million households watch the Food Network channel, which offers some of the most popular entertaining and edifying cooking shows. Top Chef also received positive responses domestically and worldwide, resulting in multiple spin-offs and international reproductions.

In the U.K., The Great British Bake Off ranks the highest rated cooking show, with an average of 10.4 million viewers each episode. Paul Hollywood’s Pies & Puds surpassed 1.5 million viewers each episode in the region.

With exposure comes recognition. Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown was presented with 12 primetime Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award from 2013 to 2019. Such prestigious awards not only solidify Bourdain’s travel and food show as an acclaimed and popular programme, they also highlight the impact of the cooking genre in the film industry.

While achievements for programmes within the cooking genre show potential for the genre to grow, opposite trends of declining viewership are reflected, at least in the US market from 2020 to 2023. This, coupled with low engagement rates on Youtube, suggest possible further decrease in popularity of cooking shows, especially among youths. Efforts to tailor and market the programmes for a larger consumer market would do well for cooking shows to create greater ripples in the film industry.

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