Early Television Fare

Programming related to cooking proved to be a convenient advertising platform for food purveyors, appliance manufacturers, and utility companies, so the topic was an obvious transfer to the burgeoning medium of television. Though television sets were technically available in the early 1940s, very few had yet to find their way into American homes. Even by 1950, less than 10 percent of homes contained a set. Most of the televisions seen by the average citizen were in appliance stores or public spaces such as bars. Nevertheless, homemakers were the target audience in the post–World War II years, and cooking shows became a familiar staple of early television, produced by local stations and hosted largely by local home economists. As on radio, programs were cheap and simple to produce, continuing to provide an ideal forum for advertising food products and kitchen gadgets. Virtually every U.S. city had at least one cooking program or homemaking show with a cooking segment, including What’s New in the Kitchen hosted by Breta Griem, Jessie’s TV Notebook, Marjorie Abel’s Hot Points in the Kitchen, Betty Adams’s Sugar ‘N Spice, the Minneapolis–St. Paul program The Bee Baxter Show, Ruth Bean’s Shop, Look and Cook, Edith Green’s Menu Magic in San Francisco, Ruth Crane’s The Modern Woman, Scoot Kennedy’s New Orleans Cookbook, Helen Ruth’s Menu Magic, Wilma Sim’s Homemaking with KSD-TV, Mary Wilson’s Pots, Pans and Personalities, Alma Kitchell’s In the Kelvinator Kitchen, Cooking with Roz and Cooking with Philameena in New Haven, and Chicago Cooks with Barbara Barkley and Chicago Cooks with Kay Middleton. As their predecessors on radio had done, these shows provided information for housewives to help them perform their kitchen duties with ease and confidence. They also affirmed women’s role as homemaker.