Getting Flayed while not Writing

Pundits say that those of us who work in entertainment are safe in a bad economy due to what is called "The Shirley Temple Effect." See, the curly-haired darling who could sing and dance was so appealing that in the darkest hours of the Great Depression, people would take their pennies to sit in the movie theatre and watch her dance up and down stairs with Bojangles and the rest. The theory is that people will spend money to be entertained, even when money is hard to come by. But those of us who live in the variety world don't know if that is really true. What seems to be the most appealing now is the reality of what's cooking. Once upon a time there was the Food Network and that was about it. No budget, not a lot of production value, but things changed. "Top Chef" sort of ushered in the craze. The extra foul mouthed Gordon Ramsey cursed everybody out regularly on BBC America and then moved to America .. The wonderful Emeril is now on Fine Living and I think there are even reruns of his old Food Network shows airing too. Why not, there's no shelf life on cooking demos. I admit food is important in my house. My daughter is a personal chef and I consider myself a great cook. But there I am glued to every cutthroat competion on Iron Chef, Hell's Kitchen, Chopped and Iron Chef America, Throwdown with Bobby Flay (at least this one is really good natured and about cooking). I'd say that at this point we have to say that the Shirley Temple effect and has been replaced by the Julia Child effect and I'm not even mad at it all. I love it, but would like a return to scripted shows (hey I need the WGA hovering around my bank account) and in that bastion of wisdom, my beauty shop, I was told yesterday that reality is about over and variety is on the upswing. Course, like a lot of people, this particular person had no idea that variety tv actually has writers. Whoa, everything has a writer, truthfully, including reality tv. I'm the writer Ruth Adkins Robinson who'd like to have a script to write, right now while I watch Bobby Flay try to make a better Mac & Cheese.