An Open Letter to The Food Network

Dear Food Network,

You are a daily part of my life. I know your channel number in my Dish Network directory by heart. You are the first channel I surf to when I want to see what's on in my faves. I have grown up with you. I've been there since the beginning when Emeril Live was once called ground-breaking. You introduced me to my second wife, Giada de Laurentiis. You taught me to become a better cook by showing Good Eats to me. And you enhance my BBQ experience every year during the months of May and June. I love you and I need you.

But your website sucks.

It's bulky and clumsy. It's packed so full of junk and ads that the site barely loads on my computer. You've tried to make it do so much with such a weak server, my tiny little eMac can barely stand to make the request. All I wanted to do was find a recipe from an episode of Everyday Italian, and you made me wait 5 minutes. That's 5 combined minutes from the time I requested your home pages, plus all the searching and page loading.

Look, my love, you need to trim it down. You have an incredibly popular cable channel with a companion web site. They need each other like I need you. But with all the gaudy graphics, databases, and ads, the side just loads too slowly. It seems that with all the ideas of what you COULD do, no one ever asked if you SHOULD do it.

My suggestion: simplify and speed up. Simplify the pages and the graphics and get some better servers. I need you in my life, but not at Nursing Home speeds.

Love,

Adam