Eddie Jackson's BBQ Blitz Premieres Tonight On Food Network

Photo - Food Network

Here is just a reminder that Food Network Star winner Eddie Jackson's show BBQ Blitz will premiere tonight on Food Network at 10:30pm ET/PT.  As detailed before, the show is a traveling/competition show where "grillers, smokers, and fire-roasters will cook off for a chance to win $5,000 and the title of best barbecue chef."  This disappointed some fans of Food Network Star who wanted to see him cook rather than host as Food Network Star focuses more on cooking than hosting.


The judges on each of the episodes include a few celebrity chef judges and a former NFL player.  Looking at the first few episode descriptions, the former NFL players appearing as judges will be: Ken "The Hammer" Hamlin, Anthony Lucas, and Quinton Caver.  All of these players attended Eddie's alma mater Arkansas, so all the players on this season may have ties to Arkansas.  The show really plays on Eddie's football past with the name BBQ Blitz, cheering spectators, and former NFL players.

BBQ Blitz will also replay three hours after the premiere at 1:30am Saturday and again on Sunday at 3:30pm ET/PT if you happen to miss it or don't DVR it.  I will update this post with the ratings for BBQ Blitz once they are released.

UPDATE - The ratings for BBQ Blitz were - Total Viewership 865,000, Target Demo 18-49 - 0.3  (TV By The Numbers).  For reference, Diners, Drive Ins and Dives right before it at 10pm had 1,029,000 Total Viewers with the same amount in the target demo.  So there was a considerable drop off.

Burgers, Brew & Que was another show that premiered in the same timeslot on July 17th, and had Total Viewership of 1,310,000 and a 0.4 in the target demo. (Show Buzz Daily).  The Diners, Drive Ins and Dives right before it at 10pm had 1,275,000 total viewers, so there was a slight increase.

Judging by these numbers, I would say that the ratings for BBQ Blitz weren't that great.

The full press release about the show from September is below if you are interested:

Eddie Jackson's BBQ Blitz Is A Traveling Competition Show

Photo - Twitter

Season 11 Food Network Star winner Eddie Jackson's show will premiere on Food Network on Friday, October 9th at 10:30pm.  So far we knew that the show would be called BBQ Blitz and according to the pilot from Food Network Star, Eddie would travel around to restaurants trying their barbecue.

Food Network revealed their October programming highlights, and in the press release, BBQ Blitz is described as:

"Game on! FOOD NETWORK STAR winner and former NFL player Eddie Jackson is taking a barbecue battle on the road in new series BBQ Blitz. In each city, three of the best grillers, smokers, and fire-roasters will cook off for a chance to win $5,000 and the title of best barbecue chef.

Online in September, get to know more about host Eddie Jackson and go behind-the-scenes of his new show. Join the BBQ journey with #BBQBlitz."

So this means the show will involve Eddie Jackson traveling to different cities and being a host of a competition show that puts barbecue chefs against each other for a $5,000 prize.  The show is currently filming and you can probably see some updates on social media using #BBQBlitz.

I am sure this may disappoint some people who would rather see the Food Network Star winner get a cooking show.  Also, a lot of people complain about too many traveling shows and competition shows on Food Network, and this combines them both into one show.  It seems like for this season of Food Network Star, 'the network' was looking for a host rather than a cook, so the POV's on the show were pretty much useless.