Category: food

Sling TV: A Big Step Forward for OTT

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Not to be confused with the Sling Box, Sling TV is a new over-the-top television service from Dish Network that allows consumers to stream a limited number of cable channels without a cable subscription.

Hundreds of thousands of people have already preregistered for Sling TV since it was announced in January at the Consumer Electronics Show, Sling TV is offering a handful of networks, led by ESPN, for $20 a month. Other networks on the service include Food Network, HGTV, Travel Channel, CNN, TNT, TBS, Disney Channel and ABC Family.

Sling TV is aimed at “cord-nevers” who want to stream nets including ESPN and Food Network for $20 a month. With its launch, the service is also rolling out a series of apps for mobile phones, tablets, and streaming devices that hook into a subscriber’s TV.

For those who want more choices, particularly for children’s content or news, Sling TV offers bonus packs of channels for $5 a month in those categories. It also hopes to have an expanded tier of sports channels at the same price, which it says is coming soon.

The introduction of Sling TV is the beginning of the TV businesses reaction to the popularity of streaming services, led by Netflix. The number of pay-TV subscribers has been slowly shrinking and there is concern that the availability of more streaming services will accelerate the decline.

Sling TV isn’t all about streaming live TV, the service will have videos from Maker Studios in addition to live TV channels from traditional TV networks. Finally, Sling TV will also offer up a selection of video-on-demand movies and TV shows that users can purchase.

To get users watching the service, Sling TV has introduced mobile apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Android phones and tablets. It will also have apps for Amazon Fire TV, the Amazon Fire TV Stick, and the Roku 3, to allow viewers to stream live cable networks directly to their TVs.

Sling TV still isn’t my dream OTT service. It makes you buy a limited bundle of preset live channels, but does not include the broadcast networks or options to add additional channels.

The good news is that Sling TV, unlike traditional cable TV bundles, has no contracts and no upfront installation costs. Subscribers can cancel at any time, and the company is offering a one-week free trial for those who’d like to try it out before committing to it.

Food Network Launches “Discover Food Network” Channel on SnapChat

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbOMqA2AOIk

Popular messaging app Snapchat announced today that it has partnered with top media media brands, including Food Network, in order to launch a new in-app news feature that will allow users to access a collection of the day’s top stories and videos with just one swipe.

The app’s new ‘Discover’ feature includes 12 unique news channels, one for each media partner, plus a dedicated Snapchat channel which will include original content from the app’s creators.

With the move, Snapchat is positioning itself as a media platform — one that reaches an estimated 100-plus million monthly active users. Snapchat Discover will compete with other video platforms and services that encompass video, including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Every channel in Snapchat Discover is refreshed after 24 hours, “because what’s news today is history tomorrow,” the company explained.

Food Network is Snapchat’s exclusive launch partner within the food category. The Discover Food Network channel on Snapchat extends the Food Network brand to reach even more young consumers with new and exciting content tailored specifically for that audience. As well as being an engaging new channel for young food fans, Discover Food Network on Snapchat will provide a new opportunity for advertisers to reach engaged young people who love food.

“Food Network has led the dialogue around food for more than two decades, informing and entertaining passionate and engaged fans, and we are excited to bring it to the Snapchat platform,” says Brooke Johnson, President of Food Network & Cooking Channel. “Audiences are more food-conscious than ever before and the Discover Food Network channel on Snapchat will provide users with the great content they love, designed specifically for their mobile devices.”

Users can tap on a channel and swipe left to flip through each channel’s daily edition, containing five to ten stories selected for the service by the Food Network editorial team.

The expectation is that some consumers will discover Food Network content through Snapchat, then seek more through Food Network’s television channels, digital and mobile platforms.

MTV Hopes to Feed ratings with Food Competition

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MTV is heading into the kitchen as a contender in food media with two new shows, MTV’s House of Food and Snackdown. According to Variety, both programs will feature a competitive culinary element.

MTV’s House of Food, will incorporate elements of MasterChef,America’s Next Top Model and the network’s own Made. Except it will focus on aspiring chefs who are assigned mentors among top chefs and then compete to win “the apprenticeship of a lifetime.” It’ll join Cooking Channel, which in June broadcast an 8-episode documentary about culinary students called premiered The Freshman Class, in covering the beginning stages of a culinary career Snackdown, which is produced by skateboarder and MTV reality TV regular Rob Dyrdek, will be a 30-minute cooking showdown between amateur chefs. Eddie Huang, owner of Baohaus in New York City and known agitator, will host the program. Model Chrissy Teigen, an outspoken foodist with her own food blog, and chef Jason Quinn of The Playground in Santa Ana are among the panel of judges. The contestants are all vying for a cash prize, their recipe published in the “SNACKDOWN” cookbook, and the coveted golden spork necklace!

 

The Top 5 Food Trends of 2012

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2012 was a year driven by unusual food trends, below are my top 5 of 2012:

1) Rouge Restaurant Reviews
While restaurateurs bemoaned the influence of Yelp and other social media review sites, 85-year-old Grand Forks Herald restaurant columnist Marilyn Hagerty cut through the noise, heaping near rhapsodic praise on the fine dining at her community’s latest chain restaurant, The Olive Garden. All she wanted to do was get to her bridge game, but her review became a must-read sensation.

Meanwhile, New York Times reviewer Pete Wells scored a celeb smackdown when he slammed Fieri’s New York restaurant, Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, in a scathing 1,000-word review written almost entirely in questions. Wells took heat for beating on Food Network’s bad boy, but the review – which tore across Twitter the instant it was posted – certainly drove hordes to Fieri’s tables, even if only to rubberneck the culinary accident.

2) Twinkies Expire
Twinkies may not last forever after all. Blaming a labor dispute for ongoing financial woes, Hostess Brands decided to close shop this year, taking with it lunch box staples such as Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Wonder bread driving rabid demand by hardcore fans of the brands. The company said it would try to sell off its many storied brands, so maybe there is hope after all for junk food junkies.

3) Pink Slime
Americans learned more than they wanted to know about their hamburgers in 2012. In March, the Internet exploded with worry over so-called pink slime, or what the meat industry prefers to call lean finely textured beef. Though it had been part of the food chain for years, by the end of the debacle the product had all but disappeared.

4) Kale-palooza
Kale was still the reigning champion of foods in 2012. Meanwhile Americans also fell in love with dark meat, after years of playing second fiddle to its lighter skin cousin, consumers finally realized what chefs have known all along – dark meat is where the flavor is.

5) Micr0-Booze
Craft beer remains a growing market, but hipster drinkers know it’s the hard stuff that’s happening. Barrel aged cocktails and micro distilleries are raging hot. But don’t be caught dead sipping coconut water. That’s so 2011.

P.S. – Food Trucks 
Yes, Food Trucks are still hot. Any food served out of a food truck or from a restaurant that “pops up” is outrageously better than any other food. And eating it makes you impossibly cool. But, could somebody please, please put an end to the cake pop phenomenon?

Epic Meal Time Launches New Competitive Cooking Series

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Epic Meal Time is one of the most popular channels on YouTube with nearly 3 million subscribers and over 486 million video views to date. Now, with the help of Collective Digital Studios and NextTime Productions, the channel has launched a new web series called Epic Chef, which is being described as “an over-the-top, calorie-filled take on the competitive cooking genre”. If you’re not familiar with Epic Meal Time, the channel is notorious among the college crowd (and like-minded viewers) for cooking up ridiculous, cholesterol-heavy dishes such as meat gingerbread houses and egg rolls the size of a human head.

Epic Chef, which will keep that notoriety intact, debuted Friday. The series pits two chefs against each other every week, as part of a bracket-style competition to determine who is, in fact, the most “Epic Chef” of them all. Each episode will feature a themed challenge such as “Epic Burger” or “Epic Mexican,” for which the competitors will have 45 minutes to create a meal worthy of the moniker, only using a box of mystery ingredients and a pantry that they will have access to.

Celebrity judges for the series include Duff from Ace of Cakes, Adam Gertler from Next Food Network Star, and a collection of YouTube stars, among others. Competing chefs include former contestants on shows like Top Chef and Iron Chef, as well as other notable food personalities.