Cookaholics Bulletin Board

All,

Is it just me, or is the tempura shrimp the only new recipe in this issue?

It is, but I loooooove tempura shrimp and am very tempted to buy this issue just for that.

CI has gotten so bad I don't even look at the new issues unless someone posts about a recipe being good. I really need to cancel my subscription, but I have all the hardbound annuals, and I'm one of those people who likes to have 'complete' sets of things, so I'll probably continue to get them. I'm so close to having OCD it's a little scary...

I just wish I could find shrimp around here that didn't have sodium tri-whatever-phosphate as a preservative. One of the problems of living in the interior, I guess...

I just got around to looking at it last night. You are right, I skimmed thru most of it. How many improved versions of a dish can we use? And where they wrong the last time they said it was the best? I'd really like to see some new inovative recipes to try. Makes you wonder what they're thinking.

Laurie

Laurie,

They're not thinking. It's pretty evident that BCP has cut back on their magazine staff and has less people producing articles. For that matter, CI and CC used to have completely different staffs, but lately they've got the same writers for both magazines producing articles which look identical, and magazines which look identical except that one is in color.

This is why I don't get "head up" about what they're doing with cooksillustrated.com: it's readily apparent they're letting the whole company go to pot.

I'm confused about their structure. Is BCP the parent company, and CI and CC are two brands within the BCP? What is CK's role? Does he own BCP?

trink.

BCP is a limited partnership owned by Chris and some other partners; it's solely a business name. The corporate brand name is America's Test Kitchen, which has six businesses: Cook's Illustrated, the magazine. Cook's Country, the magazine. America's Test Kitchen, the PBS show which highlights CI recipes. Cook's Country, the PBS show which highlights CC recipes. The book division. The website division. There is a fair amount of cross-feritilization.

The primary confusion is that when ATK, the show was launched, there was a reason they could not use the Cook's Illustrated name (I don't remember what it is). So America's Test Kitchen is both the corporate brand name and the TV show.

Lindsay,

Wow, no wonder they melted down. It's pretty hard for a small company to grow like that and keep its "personality" intact. BCP/ATK wouldn't be the first to be consumed (and destroyed) by runaway corporate bureaucracy.

Thanks Lindsay, now I understand the structure. That's a lot of similar businesses to develop and grow separate target audiences without their cannibalizing each other. Hard enough for a large company, much less a small one.

One more question, what is CK's background? I've been curious, and can't find much about him.

Nobody really does; he's very private. I know he has a degree in art history from Columbia, grew up in New York and Vermont. Started the first Cook's in early 80.