Rory Schepisi is readying her Boot Hill Saloon & Grill on Route 66 in Vega, Texas, for opening this weekend. It will be fully operational for food service at 4 p.m. Saturday, with a dance at 10 p.m. with music by Blue Steel.
But equally newsworthy is that according to the Second Helpings blog, the Food Network is dealing with big problems with last month’s voting in the finals of “The Next Food Network Star.” Schepisi finished second in electronic voting to Amy Finley, who won her own Food Network show.
The Food Network said this week that it discarded all 36 hours’ worth of text-message voting for its reality show after a glitch caused votes for Schepisi to initially be rejected. […]
Carrie Welch, the Food Network’s director of public relations, said text-message votes were just a “small percentage” of total votes and didn’t impact the final margin. “They weren’t getting through for an hour, mostly on Rory’s side … and in order to be fair to her and all the people who voted for her, we disqualified all text messages,” she said.
Viewers noticed irregularities shortly after 10 p.m. on July 22 when voting was opened. A Second Helpings reader contacted the Food Network and received this response an hour later: “Our online dept is aware and correcting this problem.”
The e-mail included these vague instructions: “For Rory, if texting ‘Rory’ still doesn’t work, I believe you can also try texting ‘B.’”
Schepisi was mostly reticent when she talked to Route 66 News about the results of the Food Network voting and the subsequent controversy. She said she was “disappointed” about the voting, but “my concern right now is getting the restaurant open.” She added that she’s been averaging about three hours’ of sleep a night this week while ensuring everything goes smoothly for the opening.
This whole season of “The Next Food Network Star” was a gigantic mess. First, a finalist was caught fabricating his background and forced off the show.
Then a contestant who was already voted off was brought back to be Schepisi’s opponent in the finals.
Then we hear of problems with voting that would put Diebold to shame.
The only way for the Food Network to resolve this debacle fairly is to give both Finley and Schepisi their own shows.
Since the judges had already voted Amy Finley off the show and brought her back because of the Jag controversy, and now the problems with the voting, we think it only fair to give Rory Schepisi a show of her own on Food Network or have a call-in only re-vote .
I didn’t see the show (we don’t have cable), but I think telling Amy Finley she won, then changing their minds and saying, “Oh, never mind — DO OVER!” sounds like one from the “two wrongs don’t make a right” file.
I think Ron’s is a better solution: Give shows to both women. Renew them if they perform well in the ratings; cancel them after the first season if they don’t.
That’s terrible, what a shame. I agree that Rory should be given her own show as well – the ratings will settle any question.
I totally agree – give both women their own show. My teenage kid was the first to point out that bringing Amy back was a bad idea. She had already “lost”. Just because the production team didn’t do enough background checking on Jag shouldn’t penalize Rory. To us it seemed dishonest not to give the show to Rory outright when Jag “took himself out”.