Filling Cable's Plate

ARE WE AT 500 CHANNELS YET? THE LATEST channel to vie for a spot on the increasingly crowded cable dial is the TV Food Network, which will serve up a 24-hour schedule of recipes, cooking tips and news of health and nutrition. Among the programs being planned: an interview show in which celebrities talk about food with host Robin Leach and a consumer series on feeding your family for $75 a week.

Financed by the Providence Journal Co., TV Food plans to debut in November and hopes to attract a portion of the $40 billion annual advertising budget of food and packaged-goods companies. Vice chairman Reese Schonfeld insists that programming will be a piece of cake. "There's almost nothing you can do on television that you can't do with a food angle," he says. A dozen years ago, Schonfeld cooked up a little channel called CNN, so he at least knows his way around the kitchen.