Why TikTok Is So Different Than Food Network Shows, According To Tiffani Thiessen - Exclusive
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As far as second acts go Tiffani Thiessen may have pulled off one of the best. The actress, best known for roles in popular TV series "Saved By The Bell" and '"White Collar," has more recently made her considerable skills in the kitchen the star of the show, hosting "Dinner at Tiffani's" on the Cooking Channel, "Deliciousness" on MTV, and releasing a cookbook, with another set to publish in September. If there's two things Thiessen clearly knows, it's food and being in front of the camera, and she recently opened up about the big differences between Food Network shows and TikTok cooking with chef and social media star Nick DiGiovanni, during an exclusive conversation on Tasting Table's "Shared Tastes" series.
DiGiovanni's videos include not just practical tips that help people become better home cooks, but also massively popular viral videos where he tests out food hacks and sets Guinness World Records. He and Thiessen discussed how the variety of food content he does compares to how she started cooking for the cameras, and how it's changed over the years. Thiessen quickly honed in on one major evolution: the pace of content. Thiessen says that during her early TV cooking days "the stand and stir was slow. It was very conversational," but as social media has taken over "The cuts are fast; the recipes are fast." Compared to five years ago, she says the speed of TikTok has made cooking videos "a whole different ball game than what I was doing."
Cooking for TV is a much calmer world than social media
Thiessen attributes the rapid pace of social media videos to the sheer volume of food content younger audiences are consuming. Like TikTok videos, she says Food Network shows are something even people who don't like to cook would watch, but for different reasons. With Food Network "It was a nice, easy thing to have in the background," according to Thiessen, and you could throw it on throughout the day because it was a calming, inoffensive presence that was family friendly. And Thiessen is right that TikTok users, on the other hand, go through a massive amount of videos, with the average user logging on 19 times per day, and younger viewers consuming over an hour worth of TikTok videos daily, despite the fact that most are under a minute long.
DiGiovanni posed a great follow-up to all this. With all that social media content out there, why do people still gravitate towards more traditional food media? Both he and Thiessen agreed that the personal touches of things like cookbooks keep people coming back, and that slower, story-drive media helps connect people more with food and recipes. Thiessen may be right that TikTok and older shows from the Food Network are very different, but it seems like they both have their strengths, and there will be a place for both for quite a while.
Click here to pre-order "Here We Go Again: Recipes and Inspiration to Level Up Your Leftovers," available on September 26. Follow the latest from Tiffani Thiessen on Instagram.
Click here to pre-order "Knife Drop: Creative Recipes Anyone Can Cook," available on June 13. Follow the latest from Nick DiGiovanni on TikTok and Youtube.