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They take a chew out of summer season TV.
Between Discovery’s Shark Week and Nationwide Geographic’s SharkFest, for many years, shark-related programming has been the apex predator dominating TV within the sizzling season.
“It’s our Tremendous Bowl,” Joseph Schneier, the SVP of Manufacturing and Growth at Discovery, informed The Submit.
He added, “It’s our greatest week of the summer season yearly. It’s usually the highest-rated factor on cable that week. We owe a bit of credit score to ‘Jaws,’ after all.”
Final 12 months, per Discovery, 25 million viewers tuned in to Shark Week.
He defined that the 1975 Steven Spielberg film “created this concept that sharks are tremendous attention-grabbing, within the American consciousness.”
Schneier mentioned that shark-related programming is “the right kickoff to the summer season. As summertime comes alongside in America, folks take into consideration seashores, the ocean on the whole, and shark tales. Thirty-seven years in the past, once we began, we have been following a nationwide development that was already taking place in native information.”
Blue shark at night time within the offshore waters of the Gulf of Maine. Picture by Brian Skerry/Nationwide Geographic Picture Assortment
Shark Week on Discovery kicks off this 12 months on Sunday, July 20 (starting at 8 p.m. ET with “Dancing With Sharks,” hosted by former “Dancing With the Stars” host Tom Bergeron).
The inaugural Shark Week was in July 1988.
“We’ve been doing this for thus lengthy that the newest crop of scientists that we’ve all grew up watching Shark Week,” he defined.
SharkFest on Nationwide Geographic began in 2012, and is at the moment airing with over 25 hours of shark-related programming on Nat Geo, Disney+, and Hulu.
Per Nat Geo, final 12 months’s SharkFest racked up over 69 million hours of viewing (together with streaming on Hulu and Disney+).
Shark Week’s programming additionally consists of scientists and marine biologists, nevertheless it has extra playful choices corresponding to “Dancing With Sharks,” “Nice White Intercourse Battle,” “Assault of the Satan Shark,” and “Frankenshark,” whereas SharkFest’s programming has a extra instructional tone.
Shark Fest’s 2025 lineup has included over 25 hours of shark-related programming, corresponding to “Sharks of the North,” “Investigation Shark Assault,” “Sharks Up Shut with Bertie Gregory,” and documentary specials about “Jaws” in honor of the film’s fiftieth anniversary,” corresponding to “Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story.”
Janet Han Vissering, SVP of Growth & Manufacturing at Nationwide Geographic Companions, additionally credited the film “Jaws” for the general public’s curiosity in sharks.
“I feel that that film introduced out this mysterious animal and introduced it entrance and heart,” she informed The Submit. “It grew to become the following little bit of a phenomenon during the last 50 years.”
She added that there are two fundamental “lanes” of how folks really feel about sharks.
“You both grew to become someone who was fascinated from a organic science strategy…And it spurred this momentum for the realm of shark biology to thrive. I speak to loads of shark biologists who say, ‘Really, ‘Jaws’ spurred me to be all in favour of that species.’”
As for the second “lane,” of individuals’s strategy to sharks: “There was one thing to be scared for, within the ocean. I feel it grew to become one thing that folks have been fascinated about. ‘Is it coming after me? What’s my relationship to this being?’”
She added that when folks take seashore holidays, the thought of the shark has develop into “synonymous with summer season.”
Is there a rivalry between Shark Week and SharkFest?
Han Vissering informed The Submit, “We attempt to run our personal race. We need to lead, and, hopefully, folks chase us, reasonably than us chasing after anybody else. Nicely accomplished on Discovery to create Shark Week. After which, we got here alongside.”
“We felt that there was nonetheless room for us to place collectively a lineup of nice shark exhibits that had a barely completely different angle, due to the entry that we had with our scientists. We had a barely completely different strategy, and we’ve been thriving with that,” she shared.
Schneier informed The Submit that as a result of the neighborhood of people that make shark exhibits is small, “we’re all pals.”
He added, “We consider the viewers remembers who began all of it…Shark programming and Shark Week are type of synonymous now, which is wonderful.”
Nevertheless, he quipped, “In some methods, it’s ‘all boats rise,’ to make use of a water pun.”
Schneier mentioned that for each Shark Week and SharkFest, “The necessary factor is we’re [both] telling nice tales about these cool creatures, and pushing a message of ocean conservation.”
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