June 3, 2014 -It all started at a party last year, when Carmel-by-the-Sea neighbors Kristy Downing and David Liskin first met.
“I am a devoted watcher of the Food Network,” says Downing, “and I explained to David that while I find local food and the farm-to-table movement the fastest-growing market segment in the media, there has been no programming around it.”
Downing, an Oxford-educated Ph.D. biochemist who had also spent a summer at the École de Cuisine La Varenne, studying her deep passion, food and cooking, had most recently been a full-time mom of three young children but was thinking of starting a local cooking school.
Liskin, after a highly successful career as head of his own television production company, which created programing for CBS, Fox Television and the U.S. government, had been looking for a way to return to his graduate work in plant physiology by creating a marriage between agriculture and television production.
But he immediately saw an opportunity in Downing’s passion, experience and charisma, coupled with his studio savvy. Particularly if he set it to music.
“This is MTV-meets-the Food Network,” says Liskin. “People talk about watching TV, but the soundscape is also really important. Music creates the mood, heightens the energy. Music is food for the ears. It was the introduction of music to this exploration of food, and the introduction of original music scored by former lead guitarist for the Eagles, Don Felder, and Eagles keyboardist Timothy Drury that brought us to the name, “Kristy Downing Rocks.” The fun of it is that it can mean various things, all of them good.”
Kristy Downing Rocks will premier on June 7 on KION-TV (Comcast channels 5 and 705), and will broadcast every Saturday at 5pm. As such, it will be the first television program focused on local, sustainable food in our area. Downing and Liskin would eventually like to add programing about other parts of the country, joining a very small field of shows that take a national look at local food, including EdibleFEAST, a new public television program produced by Edible Media, a new venture of Edible Communities, the family of magazines of which this one is a part. (See related story on this program, which airs locally on KQED Life.)
Liskin and Downing expect KDR’s “further afield” segments will explore local farm-to-table, sustainable stories in cities like Dallas, New York and Chicago. After all,” says Downing, “local is wherever you are.”
In the meantime, Downing and Liskin’s focus is on local farmers, vintners and food artisans from Big Sur to Napa and Sonoma. As of press time for this issue, they had already shot more than 200 subjects for their magazine-style program, which will feature a few different subjects in each espisode.
Downing and Liskin’s production company, Sand and Sea Productions, has also tapped into local talent to produce their food road show. Todd Champagne, co-owner of Happy Girl Kitchen, the community-building, farm-driven, artisanal preserve maker and café based in Pacific Grove, is a consultant, and Anthony Valdez, a CSU Monterey Bay graduate, is a producer.
Stay tuned.
About the author
A fifth-generation Northern Californian, Lisa Crawford Watson has enjoyed a diverse career in business, education and writing. She lives with her family on the Monterey Peninsula, where her grandmother once lived and wrote. An adjunct writing instructor for CSU Monterey Bay and Monterey Peninsula College, Lisa is also a free-lance writer, who specializes in the genres of art & architecture, health & lifestyle, food & wine. She has published various books and thousands of feature articles and columns in local and national newspapers and magazines.
