One had the test kitchen and a whopping pile of recipes. The other had the airwaves and a desire to heat up its afternoon programming. Together, they formed Best Recipes Ever, a new afternoon cooking show on CBC formed in partnership with Canadian Living magazine.
Targeted at 25- to 54-year-olds, Best Recipes Ever is a 30-minute cooking show running daily on CBC at 3 p.m. following lifestyle show Steven and Chris. Each day, host Kary Osmond guides viewers through three recipes, selected from Canadian Living‘s ‘Tested Till Perfect’ library. The show is accompanied online with a co-branded content-heavy sub-site of CBC.ca, featuring episodes of the show compiled in a video archive, text-based recipes, tips and a blog by Osmond. She will also be a regular guest on Steven and Chris.
Scheduled for 65 episodes, Best Recipes Ever launched Jan. 4 and garnered 100,000 viewers over the course of its first week, a number the network was very pleased about, Julie Bristow, executive director, factual entertainment, CBC, tells MiC.
The show stems from both CBC and Transcontinental Media’s desire to create content that extends outside of each medium’s borders, Bristow says. When Transcontinental said they’d like to do a recipe-based cooking show, it dovetailed perfectly with CBC’s desire to add a simple, basic cooking show into its post-Steven and Chris timeslot. Both companies are exciting about the cross-platform advertising opportunities the partnership opens up, she adds.
‘Because we produce original Canadian content in our studio, we have the opportunity to say to potential sponsors, ‘if it makes sense and we can elegantly integrate your product into shows, we’re certainly open for business.’ If it works that a sponsor is interested in exposure in Canadian Living magazine, online and television, they’ve got these three opportunities to be involved with us.’
Kruger Products’ Sponge Towels is the first brand to sign on with Best Recipes Ever, and the product is integrated into the show as well as on Steven and Chris and is an online advertiser as well.
The show is being promoted on-air by the CBC and in Canadian Living magazine via print ads. Osborne also has a column in the magazine and will appear in pre-movie programming in Cineplex theatres across Canada during January. CBC’s media buys are handled by M2 Universal.
‘We’re thrilled with the partnership with Canadian Living because our goals were the same from the get-go and I think people understand their brand and our brand,’ Bristow says.
