Interview: Anthony Bourdain’s Ideal TV Audience Is Anthony Bourdain
Photo Credit: Anthony Bourdain filming a scene in Manila, The Philippines, in the latest season of his CNN series Parts Unknown. CNN
Skift Take
A single-minded focus on what you think is best, rather than what others are telling you is best for you, can produce both victories and defeats. More than a decade in, it's clear which category Bourdain's travel TV is in.
Anthony Bourdain, now in his 14th year as a chef-turned-author-turned television host makes television for Anthony Bourdain.
His desire, along with that of his long-term production team at Zero Point Zero, is to make travel shows that don't appeal to a well scrutinized demographic. But appeal they somehow manage to do, despite a decidedly contrarian approach to the modern grand tour. In his shows we see poverty, political conflict, development run amok, violence, and how people really live like locals. Even the scenic cathedrals have a complicated backstory.
And it is succeeding. Bourdain is on his third network and regularly wins his time slot: At CNN Bourdain has turned his Sunday evening segments into some of the channel's most-watched non-election related programming, regularly doubling the audiences of Fox News and MSNBC combined.
"I don't make television for an audience really," Bourdain told Skift. "I make it for the same reasons when I cook. You don't see the cust
