For the most part, cooking shows of the 1940s and 1950s reflected a bland culinary scene, but the next decade would bring about more creativity—some might even say a revolution. The appearance of The French Chef on educational television (later to become public television) in 1963 altered the landscape of cooking programming considerably, in addition to launching its host, Cordon Bleu alumna and Mastering the Art of French Cooking co-author Julia Child, into the hearts and minds of TV viewing audiences for decades to come. Child gained immediate popularity with a wide range of audience demographics due to her charming, folksy personality and her nonintimidating approach to the increasingly fashionable French cuisine. Her appearance during the Kennedy administration, when Americans were especially attuned to the Francophilia embodied by Jacqueline Kennedy and the White House’s French chef, had much to do with her popularity at the time, but she remained on public television as the host of several other programs such as Julia Child & Company throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Like her predecessors James Beard and Dione Lucas, she also wanted viewers to benefit from cooking as a leisure time hobby, not merely a homemaking duty.
