Vox Media Makes Network TV Move By Bringing Eater’s ‘No Passport Required’ To PBS

Vox Media is heading to network television with an open mind and an empty stomach. The media company’s Eater brand is behind No Passport Required, a series about food and culture that will star celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson and will premiere on PBS.

In No Passport Required, Samuelsson will venture across the United States, exploring culinarily-rich neighborhoods as he goes. His itinerary includes the Ethiopian section of D.C. and the Vietnamese community in New Orleans, Variety notes. The formula Eater is employing here is reminiscent of the one Anthony Bourdain has used to become a household name. Even the titles are similar: Samuelsson’s show is No Passport Required, while one of Bourdain’s first forays into TV was titled No Reservations.

Vox Media, which has already established an expansive lineup of digital content and secured $200 million in funding from NBCUniversal, has recently increased its investment in long-form content. To execute that strategy, it has teamed up with digital platforms like Go90

and has inked multiple deals with TV partners. In addition to No Passport Required, Vox Media is also producing a show about prefab homes that is routed through its Curbed brand and expected to premiere on the FYI Channel.

No Passport Required doesn’t yet have a confirmed arrival date, but PBS is expected to premiere it sometime in the summer or fall of 2018, according to Variety. In the meantime, Eater will continue to entertain its foodie followers with regular updates to its YouTube channel. The brand’s online video hub, which feasts on the sizable appetite for food content, has received more than 100 million views to date.