How Patrick Larsen approached the launch-era set design for ABC's daytime series The Chew — where a working kitchen, a living-room talk show and a live broadcast all share one frame.
Broadcast design demands a set that performs for hours on live television. Patrick Larsen designed the launch-era set for ABC's daytime series The Chew (2011).
A lot of my craft was learned in the most unforgiving medium there is: live daytime TV. In 2011 ABC launched The Chew, a daily cooking-and-talk show. I worked on the launch-era set as part of my New York broadcast years.
A daytime set is a harder brief than it looks. It has to be a real working kitchen and a comfortable talk-show living room at the same time. It has to look warm on camera and still hide the lighting, cabling and camera lanes a live broadcast needs. And it has to hold up shot after shot, day after day. No blackouts to cover a transition — just continuous, well-lit airtime where every surface is on display.
The discipline is the same one that later earned the Emmy for my news work: make the design invisible so the content lands, and make it perform on every camera. Daytime is where I learned that the highest compliment is for the audience to never notice the set at all.
