Table Of ContentDigital Food TV
This book explores the new theoretical and political questions raised
by food TV’s digital transformation.
Bringing together analyses of food media texts and platform
infrastructures—from streaming and catch-up TV to YouTube and
Facebook food videos—it shows how new textual conventions, algo-
rithmic practices, and market logics have redrawn the boundaries of
food TV and altered the cultural place of food, and food media, in a
digital era. With case studies of new and rerun television and emerging
online genres, Digital Food TV considers what food television means
at the current moment—a time when on-screen digital content is rap-
idly proliferating and televisual platforms and technologies are under-
going significant change.
This book will appeal to students and scholars of food studies, tele-
vision studies, and digital media studies.
Michelle Phillipov is a Senior Lecturer in Media at the University of
Adelaide. Her research explores the role of food media in shaping pub-
lic debate, media and food industry practices, and consumer politics.
She is an author or editor of five books, including Media and Food
Industries: The New Politics of Food, Alternative Food Politics: From
the Margins to the Mainstream (with Katherine Kirkwood), and Fats:
A Global History.
Routledge Focus on Television Studies
The Evolution of Black Women in Television
Mammies, Matriarchs and Mistresses
Imani M. Cheers
Heroism, Celebrity and Therapy in Nurse Jackie
Christopher Pullen
Re-scheduling Television in the Digital Era
Hanne Bruun
Digital Food TV
The Cultural Place of Food in a Digital Era
Michelle Phillipov
Digital Food TV
The Cultural Place of Food in a
Digital Era
Michelle Phillipov
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Michelle Phillipov
The right of Michelle Phillipov to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Phillipov, Michelle, author.
Title: Digital food TV : the cultural place of food in a digital era /
Michelle Phillipov.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2023. |
Series: Routledge focus on television studies | Includes
bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2022033740 (print) | LCCN 2022033741 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781032200323 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032200330 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003261940 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Food on television. | Digital television. | Food—
Political aspects. | Streaming video. | Internet television.
Classification: LCC PN1992.8.F66 P45 2023 (print) | LCC
PN1992.8.F66 (ebook) | DDC 791.45/6564—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022033740
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022033741
ISBN: 9781032200323 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032200330 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003261940 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261940
Typeset in Times New Roman
by codeMantra
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction: Digital platforms and televisual food 1
1 Re-reading televisual flow: The politics of
reruns on catch-up TV 18
2 Streaming reality: Neoliberal subjectivities,
aspirational labour, and Netflix food programming 41
3 Affect switches: Affective capture and market
logics in online food videos 65
4 Technologies of intimacy: Reimagining
broadcast food TV in the pandemic 87
Conclusion: Television and the politics of digital food 108
Index 113
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of Chapter 2 was published in Communication
Research and Practice (vol. 8, no. 2) under the title ‘Loving neoliber-
alism? Digital labour and aspirational work on streaming food TV’.
Thanks to Alexander Beare and Joanne Hollows for their generous
feedback on chapter drafts (Chapters 1 and 4, respectively); to Chris-
tine Knight for the thorough edit; and to Karen Gillen for the prepa-
ration of the index.
Introduction
Digital platforms and
televisual food
After dominating broadcast and cable television schedules for much
of the 2000s, food TV has more recently found a range of new lives in
non-linear, digital forms of production and circulation. In much the
same way that it once provided a salve to struggling broadcast and
cable industries (Oren 2013; Phillipov 2017: 2), food content is now pro-
liferating on digital platforms, with both new and old food offerings
becoming staples of streaming services, catch-up TV, and social media.
Netflix, in particular, has made significant investments in originally
produced food programming in recent years (Phillipov 2022), while
rerun food content continues to bolster the back catalogues of online
streaming and catch-up services. Professional, semi-professional,
and amateur food content produced for YouTube, TikTok, Facebook,
and Instagram is also booming, with ‘food’ consistently outper-
forming most other industry categories for both audience and brand
engagement (Cucu 2022).
Food television’s shift away from linear schedules to “interactive,
curated databases” (Lobato 2018: 243; see also Lotz 2017: 23) has
seen food programming take on new forms, with older content—
produced in response to earlier industrial conditions and constraints—
reappearing in new contexts. These have contributed to (re)shaping
the types of food content that are produced and promoted, while
changing how the meanings, politics, and affects of this content are to
be understood. For example, a YouTube cooking channel may adopt
conventions from earlier “stand-and-stir” (Strange 1998) television
cookery programs, or a Netflix Original show may mimic tropes that
originated in broadcast reality formats—but the industry and audi-
ence practices and algorithmic and market logics that underpin newer
digital forms mean that the powers and pleasures of individual pro-
grams may not necessarily conform to our earlier scholarly under-
standings. The sheer proliferation of content online disrupts many of
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261940-1
