Food on TV focus of new course

10:56 a.m., June 20, 2005--Alumna Susannah Eaton-Ryan’s job descriptions have included rescuing Mick Jagger from an adoring crowd, putting Emeril Lagasse on television and teaching UD students.

Eaton-Ryan, AS ’69, former senior vice president of operations for the Food Network, taught a new course, “Introduction to Food on Television” during spring semester at UD. Eaton-Ryan was on the other side of the desk in the late ‘60s as an undergraduate at UD. She grew up in Claymont when the I-95 Harvey Road off-ramp was an apple orchard.

“I really became my own person here,’’ she recalls. “It was a safe environment. I’m a total risk taker. I’m always out on a limb and the limb is always breaking, but, here, it was safe to explore. I stuck my finger in a lot of pies.’’

She went from UD drama and business courses to Wall Street, where she worked for a conglomerate long enough to hire her now-husband, Edward Ryan, as a billing clerk. From there, they followed his muse--music.

She managed his band and eventually managed CBGB’s at the foot of Bleeker Street in Greenwich Village, the punk-rock club that hosted the Talking Heads, Patti Smith, Blondie and The Ramones.

When Bruce Springsteen joined Patti Smith on stage, Eaton-Ryan was floored by the Boss’ small size. (“He was so short. I couldn’t get beyond how tiny he was.”) When Mick Jagger and then-wife Jerry Hall showed up in the audience, Eaton-Ryan had to escort him out to protect him from enthusiastic fans. (“He was very nice, very polite.’’)

Then, Eaton-Ryan retooled herself as a manager for a new cable network so cash-poor that people she hired were the same age as some of her current UD students. That was before the Food Network became a household word.

The Food Network viewership now ranks at 31 among the 71 premium cable channels—higher than Lifetime TV. But, in 1993, no one knew whether the marriage of food and television would be successful.

Julia Child and other celebrity chefs had done television, but with much bigger budgets. The early Food Network was a mélange of live-to-tape programming with no room for flubs and vintage cooking shows with new wrap-around intros.

Before Emeril Lagasse had a sitcom or eight best-selling cookbooks, when he owned just two New Orleans restaurants, he became an early star at the Food Network. Eaton-Ryan says Lagasse is the regular guy he projects on television, even now.

“He’s wonderful,’’ she said. “He truly is the wonderful, nice person you see on camera.”

Eaton-Ryan lunched with Julia Child (“super intelligent”), met with Sarah “Fergie” Ferguson in her pre-Weight-Watcher days (“lovely”) and was an early fan of The Iron Chef television show when it was first imported from Japan (“A young kid in programming fought for The Iron Chef. I knew it would be a winner.”)

Eaton-Ryan, who had lived in New York City all of her adult life, was in the subway beneath the South Tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists flew the first plane into the North Tower.

Last year, she packed up and moved to Pike Creek Valley to care for her father before his death earlier this year. Her husband took a job teaching music in Middletown, and she, once again, has her fingers in several pots

She’s talking up an Actor’s Studio-style show on chefs tentatively titled, “Talking Food.” She helped produce UD’s new “Wine Online” course taped at the Vita Nova television studio in Trabant University Center and available for restaurants and individuals on CD and on the Internet at [http://www.continuingstudies.udel.edu/udonline/wine/individuals.html]. And, she had a full room for her first “Introduction to Food on Television” class.

It’s 13 years after the advent of the Food Network, though, and the impact of the network she helped birth is evident at the first class when a communication major explains why she took the class: “My dream is to be on the Food Network.’’

“UD HRIM is fortunate to have a leader from the Food Network join us to increase student educational awareness of our Vita Nova TV studio,” Frederick J. DeMicco, ARAMARK Chair of Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management, said. “As a veteran of the Food Network, who helped start the Emeril shows, Susannah certainly has hit the ground running here at UD. She can teach our students about the importance of the electronic media today in promoting and marketing a restaurant or hotel after they graduate from UD. “

Article by Kathy Canavan

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