Animal Planet shows animal faces. Anything with a recognizable mouth and set of eyes is still pretty engaging to our wetware.
(In fact, I just tried "Animal Planet" on Google images, and got mostly face shots -- human and otherwise.)
Good point, but I was responding to this quote: "You wouldn't watch that show unless it had a lot of humans in it, preferably attractive ones, showing their faces." Not sure why I deserved a downvote.
I would say Food Network shows DO show a lot of faces. They are very much about selling a brand. Just walking through the local Target housewares aisle, I see Rachel Ray, Giada, Paula Deen, Barefoot Contessa, Bobby Flay, etc, all with their own brand of cooking accessories.
Of course you are right, but there are also several shows that spend a lot of camera time on up-close shots of the food and the food preparation process, only occasionally showing the host. Those are the ones that I was referring to.
Iron Chef does a decent job of this. I wish they offered different "cuts" of episodes - I don't care about anything the judges have to say until they're chewing.