Although he had now completed Cerulean City's achievement quest, Heath was in no hurry to leave. Farfetch'd's cooking competition was not over yet, so Heath had to stay here a little longer. Tonight was Farfetch'd's second preliminary round, and passing it would secure a place in the top thirty-two. Heath had asked the competition staff himself, and according to them, this competition would take about a month to reach the finals because there was editing, postproduction, and other work to do along the way. Of course, it would not actually take that long.
There were several ways to produce variety shows these days. The first was to follow the schedule in real time, adjusting the next episode's content based on audience feedback after each episode aired, and even arranging who would advance. Naturally, this had its advantages. If the show performed poorly, they could find an opportunity to end it, and if the ratings were high, they could keep it going. The second was to finish recording everything in advance, then handle postproduction and scheduling before finally releasing it according to the broadcast plan.
The advantage of this was that it saved time, but the drawback was equally obvious: they would not know how well it would perform. Once it started airing, they basically had to air the whole thing, or it would be a real waste-unless the ratings had truly fallen to an outrageous low.
This food show followed the latter arrangement. According to the staff, once tonight's competition was over, they would move straight to the semifinals tomorrow. Once they reached the semifinals, there would be a gap of about half a month before the semifinals and finals officially began. That meant Heath only needed to wait until tomorrow evening before he could end his trip to Cerulean