Martha Stewart hops to PBS with ‘Cooking School’ TV show

From syndication to Hallmark Channel and now to PBS, Martha Stewart continues her march across the TV landscape in search of a sustainable audience.

Martha’s new weekly series, “Martha Stewart’s Cooking School,” will debut on PBS in the fall. Stewart’s Living Omnimedia company is producing the show with the District station WETA, which calls the show a “teaching series.”

In January, Hallmark announced that it was pulling the daily “The Martha Stewart Show” in the summer. The home-entertainment maven has struggled at the cable network for a couple of years, having migrated there after a spell in the rough-and-tumble world of daytime syndication.

The cooking show comes in the nick of time: WETA also announced Thursday that, come June, it will be shuttering its lifestyle channel, WETA How-To, which had included cooking shows, among other programming. In the summer, the channel will become WETA UK and, as the name suggests, it will traffic exclusively in programming from U.K. producers, including BBC classics, 24/7.

“MI-5,” “Hustle,” “Waking the Dead,” “Primeval” and “New Tricks” — some of which are still airing in Britain — will share the WETA UK lineup.

Love all those old British comedies and dramas? Shows such as “All Creatures Great and Small,” “Ballykissangel,” vintage “Doctor Who,” “Waiting for God,” “Inspector Morse,” “Monarch of the Glen,” “Fawlty Towers,” “Prime Suspect,” “Keeping Up Appearances,” “Robin Hood,” “To the Manor Born,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “Are you Being Served?” — and “Masterpiece” productions from when it was called “Masterpiece Theatre.” We could go on and on.

Anyway, if you love them, you’re in luck — they’re on the menu, too.

Plus, there will be episodes of the original BBC “Antiques Roadshow,” which not only spawned the U.S. version of the same name but also gave birth to all those “Pawn Stars” and “American Pickers” that have thrived and proliferated across our great cable universe.

Saturday nights on WETA UK will be all about movies — feature film-length contemporary drama.

WETA UK joins the WETA television family that also includes the mothership station WETA TV 26, WETA HD and WETA Kids.

Getting back to Martha Stewart: In each 30-minute episode of her “Cooking School,” she will demonstrate classic cooking techniques and basics — the building blocks of recipes everyone should know, from roasting to poaching, from braising to blanching.

Martha and WETA are old friends, having previously produced the station’s “Everyday Food,” minus Martha as host.

On this new show, however, you’ll have Martha right by your side, showing you how to make the perfect pot roast, how to make stocks — not sell them — and why they’re so essential to making sauces and delicious soups.

‘GMA’s’ win grows

Turns out, ABC’s “Good Morning America” beat NBC’s “Today” show last week by 31,000 viewers, Nielsen reported Thursday morning — not 13,000, as Nielsen reported Monday.

Last week, with “GMA” co-anchor Robin Roberts back from vacation, the ABC morning infotainment program beat “Today,” thus ending the NBC show’s 16-year-plus record as the weekly ratings winner.