Inside Valerie Bertinelli’s Exit From Food Network’s ‘Kids Baking Championship’ (EXCLUSIVE)
23.01.2024 - 21:09
/ variety.com
Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Valerie Bertinelli‘s departure from “Kids Baking Championship” is not a cut-and-dry case of Food Network firing the “One Day at a Time” alum from her role as co-host and judge of the show. Rather, it’s the aftermath of the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned channel deciding not to renew Bertinelli’s larger exclusive deal with the network when it ended in 2022, sources tell Variety. Bertinelli signed a multi-series deal with Food Network in 2018, which expired in 2021.
The pact was extended for an additional year and came to an end in 2022, when the currently airing Season 12 of “Kids Baking Championship” was taped back to back with Season 11. Bertinelli has co-hosted and judged ‘Kids,” a spinoff of Food Network’s larger “Baking Championship” competition franchise that includes holiday and seasonal iterations, alongside Duff Goldman since it first debuted on Food Network in 2015. “Her deal expired, they opted not to renew it.
They could have come to me with an offer just for ‘Kids.’ They never did. Simple as that,” Bertinelli’s longtime manager Marc Schwartz told Variety Tuesday. According to insiders, the choice to not renew Bertinelli’s deal in 2022 was made by development execs that no longer work at the network: Former president Courtney White exited Food Networkin March 2022 ahead of the close of the Discovery-WarnerMedia merger, followed soon by her replacement Jane Latman in December 2022.
Betsy Ayala has been in the chief post since that time. Bertinelli’s deal ended more than a year ago, and she has no projects currently filming or in development at Food Network. A source close to the situation says an offer was not made by the network for Bertinelli to continue as co-host on “Kids”
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