Short and snappy. Our lives are busy and fast paced, and information is served to us in headlines and bite-sized chunks. Likewise, we eat food on the go, at our desks, on the train, walking to college. By its very nature, food made live on television has to be quick, if it’s going to align with the specific timing for each segment. The Today Show on RTÉ serves up speedy and simple meals. By going to the Today Show in Cork, I got an inside look into the mechanics of food and television. Going behind the scenes of a television set shows the importance of preparation and timing, but also the golden rules: keep it simple and make it quickly. This is the ideal for a busy student schedule.
The Today Show has segments on fashion, food, health, travel and many other topics. This week’s theme for food was “Fussy Eaters”. Planning is essential for a live show, and chefs must be booked weeks in advance. Producer Rory Cobbe outlined how they want the food to be doable at home, and so it must be simple and different. The recipes are immediately made available online after the show, and they are also available on RTÉ player. According to Cobbe, the food must be educational in some way, and needs that “wow factor”. He explains how they don’t try to complicate things. People would shrink away at the words “truffle oil” and risotto is banned from the show, Cobbe tells me, laughing.
The camera gives the impression that this is just your normal everyday kitchen, but once you step behind the counter, that illusion is shattered.
The set for the Today Show is particularly interesting. There is a couch for discussions and interviews, and the kitchen set is to the right side of this. The camera gives the impression that this is just your normal everyday kitchen, but once you step behind the counter, that illusion is shattered. There is a balance between the working essentials and the essential fakes. For example, the ovens all work but there are no pipes or drainage for the water tap, and there is a bucket that gathers the drops, when the water does have to be used. The cupboards are locked and mostly empty, and the array of spices on the set are completely inedible.
While only a six or seven minute slot, a remarkable amount of work goes into that timing. What Cobbe coined as the “geography of the piece” is of the utmost importance in television, and this varies for every different show and segment, including food. They must orchestrate each piece correctly, so pacing is very important. As with language, Cobbe explained how there is syntax to it. Everything has its place and it must fall at the correct time. They switch from camera to camera, from wide to close angles. Dáithí Ó Sé, co-presenter of the show along with Maura Derrane, also discussed the importance of continuity in the show as a whole. They open the show, discuss topical questions, have the food segments, and then move from a heavy topic to a light topic. In the case of the show referred to in this article, it was a case of moving from a discussion with Dr. Phil on Seasonal Affective Disorder, to discussing the highs and woes of Tinder.
I got a real sense of the atmosphere of excitement, business and fun that comes with a live show. The stakes are high and anything can go wrong.
I watched from a chair propped up behind the set. Chef Eunice Power had an item on that particular day. Along with running her own catering company, Power is a regular on the show, and first appeared on it around four years ago. As we talked, she reflected on the sense of community within the Today show, and how they’re all like one big family, which certainty added to her sense of enjoyment on the show.
Along with Cobbe and Daithí, Power also placed emphasis on the importance of timing. It hasn’t happened to her, but she joked about others who have gotten timing wrong and burnt things in the oven on live television. On the Today Show, each of the chefs brings their own ingredients. In the rehearsals, they don’t actually practice cooking the food, unless they need a certain portion of the meal to be prepared in advance. Power also cautioned against the potential fallback of over-preparing. For a food segment, you need to be organized but also leave yourself things to do. Power cooked a fancier version of the well-loved fish fingers and mushy peas.
She grated the lemon, talked to Daithí and stirred the peas. It was like this little story playing out, perfectly planned down to the minute.
In preparation, Power had placed an already-cooked version of the meal into the oven, because it takes twenty minutes and would not fit into the allotted time frame. She also cooked the peas, and prepared part of the breadcrumbs and fish batter. For the actual show, she would leave herself certain tasks such as grating the lemon and covering the fish with breadcrumbs. Each small action and movement that seemed so insignificant was actually crucial in terms of the final timing. I got a real sense of the atmosphere of excitement, business and fun that comes with a live show. The stakes are high and anything can go wrong.
As the show went on air, it became apparent that it was not tightly scripted. For the food segment, Power and Daithí came on, and I quickly saw Power’s previous chat transforming into reality. She grated the lemon, talked to Daithí and stirred the peas. It was like this little story playing out, perfectly planned down to the minute. When she was finished, Power put the fish fingers into the oven, only to immediately take out the ones that had already been cooked. And that was the end. It was over in around seven minutes, with an incredible amount of hard work involved. There were rooms of people, bent over computers and soundboards, all ensuring that it went perfectly; all contributing to the storytelling that is a television show. As it’s a live show, there was a short break after the food segment. The staff all huddled around the steaming plates of food and dug in. This happens every day, with staff from the office above also getting a whiff of the freshly cooked meals and coming down to huddle around the food.
The online response was instantaneous, with Power’s picture already posted on Facebook, accompanied by comments from viewers promising to cook that very meal straight away. Television does seem to contribute to the popularity and making of accessible, simple food. It has contributed to changing the way that we think about food and drink. The neat, tidy and well-thought out food segments on a show such at the Today Show fits in well with our busy lives.
