Warner Bros heats up food format

Chef In Your Ear

Warner Bros International Television Production (WBITVP) has picked up worldwide TV rights, excluding Asia, to a top-rating Food Network Canada show.

Chef In Your Ear is a 26-part primetime series in which two professional chefs must deliver a restaurant-quality dish by proxy.

All the cooking is done by two novice cooks, many of whom claim to be kitchen disasters, each wearing an ear-piece and receiving instructions from a pro.

Created by California- and UK-based company The Format People, the studio gameshow launched on Food Network Canada in August and has gone on to become its number-one show on Monday nights.

Bomanbridge Media in Singapore will handle distribution in Asia, while Canadian chef and host Ricardo Larrivée will be attending Mipcom next week.

A 14-part French-language version of the format, Un Chef À L’Oreille, has also been produced by 350 Productions for Ici Radio-Canada Télé.

Andrew Zein, senior VP, creative, format development and sales at WBITVP, said the series provides a “totally new TV experience that is exciting, emotional at times and rewarding for both the viewer and contestant.”

The US company has production operations in 15 countries worldwide, producing multi-territory versions of series such as First Dates, Who Do You Think You Are?, Impractical Jokers and The Bachelor.

It recently secured its first international broadcaster for the format 500 Questions, which was originally created for US broadcaster ABC by Mark Burnett and Warner Bros’ Mike Darnell.