Off the boil: the decline of the TV cooking show

A string of controversies have bubbled over in the genre just as people are flocking to simpler cooking clips on social media

Masterchef set
Just 12 cookery TV shows have been commissioned over the first seven months of the year, down from 42 last year
(Image credit: Alexander Tamargo / Telemundo / NBCU Photo Bank / NBCUniversal via Getty Images)

Cooking shows have long been "the toast of television: mouth-wateringly wholesome fun, cheap to make and often a surefire ratings hit", said The Times.

But now they're facing the chop. A string of controversies has bubbled over just as people are flocking to simpler, social media cooking clips, but are these viral online videos a recipe for new problems?

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Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.