Why Valerie Bertinelli Left Food Network and Kids Baking Championship

TLDR: Valerie Bertinelli co-hosted Kids Baking Championship from 2015 until January 2024, when she says a text from a third party told her she was out. She links it to budget cuts, while Variety’s sources point to an expired overall deal, and Food Network has said nothing on the record. Checked October 29, 2026.

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Longtime fans of Valerie Bertinelli first met her as Barbara on One Day at a Time, long before she was handing out oven mitts to children on cable. For a lot of viewers she became the friendly face who made cooking look like something you could do after a hard day.

Her exit from Food Network in early 2024 felt abrupt to those viewers. The story has two sides, hers and the one told by unnamed people close to the network, and they overlap more than you might expect.

A Decade of Food Network Work

Bertinelli co-hosted and judged Kids Baking Championship alongside Duff Goldman from its 2015 premiere. She also hosted Valerie’s Home Cooking and Family Food Showdown.

Variety reports she signed a multi-series deal with the network in 2018, which was extended by a year in 2021 and ended in 2022. That timeline matters because it sets up everything that followed.

Valerie’s Home Cooking Ended First

Food Network canceled Valerie’s Home Cooking in April 2023 after 14 seasons, per NBC New York. Bertinelli said she did not know why and had hoped the network would change its mind.

How She Says She Found Out About Kids Baking

In a video on Instagram and a follow-up post on Threads, summarized by TVLine, Bertinelli said a third party texted her on January 19, 2024 that she would not be back. She felt she had been, in her word, ghosted.

She had noticed she was left out of the holiday specials and suspected something was off. She also said the news hurt and that she would not tolerate being lied to.

She was careful to say she bore no ill will toward the network’s staff, whom she called kind and hard-working. She tied the decision to budget cuts and called it business.

What Variety’s Sources Said

Variety reported that the exit was not a direct firing. Its sources said it followed the network’s decision not to renew her overall deal, and that insiders believed she would not stay on Kids Baking Championship without it.

Her manager told Variety no offer for the kids show alone was ever made. Food Network declined to comment, so none of the network’s side is on the record.

That is worth holding onto. Bertinelli’s account and the Variety account differ in emphasis and can both be true.

What She Said Months Later

On April 9, 2024 she wrote on Threads that she had fallen for the network two decades earlier because of its hands-on cooking shows. NBC New York reported that she called it sad that the focus had moved away from cooking and learning.

She added that it was simply business. Neither the network nor Warner Bros. Discovery responded in that article.

Where This Leaves the Story

Nobody has put a documented reason for the end of her Food Network run on the record, other than Bertinelli’s own view about budgets. Anything beyond that is guesswork, and we are not going to supply it.

Her exit is also not unique. Giada De Laurentiis went the other way and left for Amazon, which we cover in our Giada De Laurentiis guide, and our roundup of Food Network stars and their personal lives shows how many familiar faces have moved on.

To see how she got here, start with her sitcom years in the One Day at a Time cast guide.

Valerie Bertinelli Food Network Frequently Asked Questions