
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 7, 1994                    TAG: 9406070048 
SECTION: DAILY BREAK                     PAGE: B2    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: Larry Bonko 
DATELINE: 940607                                 LENGTH: Medium

FOOD CHANNEL WOULD WHET YOUR APPETITE

{LEAD} I SAW A LITTLE of the TV Food Network when the network's president, Reese Schonfeld, showed it off at the cable television convention in New Orleans not long ago. To keep the delegates interested while Reese and his colleagues went about selling the network, a chef dished out crawfish beignets with tomato corn tartar sauce and, for good measure, a bit of Chicken Tandoori.

Plus . . . Mama's Cornbread.

{REST} Delightful.

I'd like to see more of the TV Food Network, particularly the most sinful 30 minutes on television, ``The Dessert Show.''

Memo to the bosses at Cox Cable: Ditch C-SPAN 2 and replace it with the TV Food Network. I get all the congressional bluster I can handle on C-SPAN.

While attending the cable convention, I was exposed to some neat channels that are up and running but not seen in this market - as well as 98 new channels due to sign on in the next year or so. The mix of channels on Cox Cable (the service I subscribe to) is OK, but it could be better.

Adding Nostalgia Television would make it better.

Gavin MacLeod attended the convention on behalf of Nostalgia to remind delegates that his old ABC series, ``The Love Boat,'' has set sail on the network.

Cox Cable could ditch the ``Prevue'' channel and replace it with Nostalgia Television.

Here are five cable channels I wish I could see but can't:

The TV Food Network - Launched just six months ago, the channel is already reaching 12 million subscribers. It's more than recipes. It's on around the clock with programs that are good for you (``Getting Healthy,'' ``Feeding Your Family on $99 a Week'') and others that are just for fun, such as ``Robin Leach Talking Food.''

At the TV Food Network the slogan is, ``Today, people watch what they eat. Now they can eat what they watch.''

ESPN-2 - This channel is about to reel off five games in the World Cup Soccer Tournament that will not be interrupted for commercials. Haven't you been waiting for that, sports fans? It's the channel of Arena Football, which is better than no football on TV. The best thing about ESPN-2 is ``Sportsnight,'' a daily 90-minute roundup of the day's events that is on at 5 and 9 p.m. There is a sports talk show called ``Talk 2'' and other programming pitched to women and younger viewers.

Cartoon Network - The question that I am asked most often by people who write or call me on Infoline (640-5555, Category 3333) is when will Cox Cable add the Cartoon Network. The answer is not anytime soon. Cox recently made room for one new channel, fX, and is not likely to add another in 1994. Too bad. In addition to an extensive library of vintage cartoons from Turner Broadcasting and Hanna-Barbera Inc., the Cartoon Network is producing 48 new seven-minute shorts in the next few months. The neatest show on the network is the late-night talk show hosted by Space Ghost.

Nostalgia Television - This is the channel that shows the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans movies of the 1940s, good old series that were very popular (``Ben Casey,'' ``Combat'') and good old series that were never wildly successful (``N.Y.P.D.'') as well as two hours of silent films on the weekends. Delegates to the New Orleans convention were buzzing about Nostalgia Television's late-night programming on Saturday called ``The Not So Hot, Actually Pretty Bad, Movie Showcase Theater.'' Aren't you dying to see ``Dead Men Walk''?

Turner Classic Movies - This channel reels off movies 24 hours a day without commercials. That's 400 titles a month. They are films of Hollywood's Golden Age from Turner's library of pictures made by MGM, Warner Brothers, RKO, Paramount and Universal.

Wouldn't you be happy to swap C-SPAN-2 for any one of these five channels? by CNB