Sharks: these relics from a prehistoric age have terrified and fascinated humanity in equal measure since time immemorial. With their beady little eyes, rows of huge, jagged teeth, and ability to literally smell blood in the water, sharks are an existential terror made real. And that's exactly why we all love Shark Week so much! Since debuting in 1987, Discovery Channel's annual Shark Week festivities have brought sharks into the pop culture mainstream. Building off the success of the Jaws franchise, Shark Week has taken a more documentary look at these magnificent creatures. Well, except for the megalodon and Michael Phelps fiascos. But is Shark Week lying to us about how dangerous sharks really are? Here's the untold truth of Shark Week.
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00:00Shark Week is one of the most loved, feared, and hated weeks on cable TV,
00:05and every year it inspires controversy, debate, rabid binge-watching, and cupcakes with shark
00:11fins sticking out of them. Still, there's plenty to know about the show besides what you've seen
00:15on the screen. Shark Week has been around almost as long as the Discovery Channel,
00:21which launched in 1985. Just two years later, network executives started wondering how they
00:26might be able to convince their potential summertime audience to stop enjoying the
00:31sunshine at the beach and waste away in front of the television instead.
00:35The most popular Shark Week origin story has executives raising the idea at a drunken
00:41after-work party and writing it down on a cocktail napkin. But the most reliable account probably
00:46comes from Tom Siebert, who was a 20-something new hire at the fledgling network in 1987.
00:52According to Siebert, he raised the idea sarcastically during a brainstorming session.
00:56Look, we know the bigger the animal, the bigger the ratings, and if it can kill you,
01:00that's the best. So why don't we just air shark shows all summer?
01:03The funniest part about this version of the story is that Siebert wasn't even serious.
01:08He only threw out the idea because he was annoyed that the network was really just worried about
01:12their bottom line, and he later recalled sitting aghast as the idea was actually discussed.
01:18That night, the idea was passed along to Discovery's founder and CEO,
01:21John Hendricks, who was really into it. Now, three decades later,
01:25viewers all get to be pissed off every year because megalodons no longer exist.
01:31Shark Week was hostless for the first few years. Then in 1994, the network landed Peter Benchley,
01:37author of Jaws, as its first host. At that time, Benchley was celebrating the 20th anniversary of
01:43his best-selling man-eating shark novel, which was the basis for Steven Spielberg's 1975
01:49blockbuster of the same name. Benchley introduced each Shark Week program from a location where the
01:54famously terrifying movie had been shot, proving once and for all that Shark Week isn't about
01:59sensationalizing the ocean-dwelling predator. It's about science and education.
02:04After Benchley's appearance, Shark Week has featured celebrity hosts regularly. Notable
02:09alumni include Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs, comedian Craig Ferguson, Rob Lowe,
02:14and supermodel Heidi Klum, because supermodels and sharks have so much in common.
02:20Shark Week has some enemies, including marine activists and conservationists,
02:24who want us to think that sharks are gentle creatures, like kittens,
02:28only with five rows of giant teeth and bloodstained lips. To be fair, though,
02:32Discovery has had to stand on both ends of the ratings teeter-totter. Does it air
02:37sensationalized programming featuring blood, violence, and death, or does it tell the often
02:42boring but much more educational truth about sharks? For example, in 2014, ABC News reported
02:49that death by cow is about five times more common than death by shark. Sharks kill an average of
02:55four people annually, while cows gore or trampled to death an average of 22 people.
03:01Audiences probably won't see the Discovery Network's historic launch of Cow Week anytime
03:06soon, mostly because cows don't have the aforementioned five rows of giant teeth and
03:11bloodstained lips. But hey, maybe all it will take is another sarcastic pitch in a brainstorming
03:16session. Here's to hoping. Conservationists are understandably concerned about the sensationalism.
03:22It seems like the network features more violence every year, which typically includes dramatized
03:27recreations of shark attacks. Such programming creates the false impression that sharks are
03:32more dangerous than they are, which has a negative impact on conservation efforts.
03:37The truth is that shark populations around the world are in decline,
03:41and most people don't seem to care. And although there's no proof that Shark Week is to blame,
03:46it's hard for a lot of people to internalize the idea that the great white that just ate
03:50some guy on Shark Week needs to be protected. Clearly, all those conservationists have never
03:56seen the Sharknado series of films, or they might know that the man-eating instinct is
04:02so ingrained in the shark's psyche that sharks will attack anything that moves,
04:06even after falling thousands of feet out of a passing tornado. But hey, guess what? Sharknado
04:11is actually fiction. Yes, it's true. Most sharks will actually die after a 50,000-foot drop,
04:18and any that survive wouldn't have much of an appetite. Shark Week does occasionally
04:22make an effort to tell the truth about sharks, and this was especially true in the early years.
04:27Since then, the network has also invested heavily in some of the world's best videographers and
04:32documentarians, and the network has never really lied about the nature of the shark attack.
04:37Humans don't live in the ocean, and as such are not on the shark's list of approved snacks.
04:43Former Discovery Channel president and general manager W. Clark Bunting told Time magazine in
04:482010,
04:49"...we hope that as we tell these stories, people hear the real message,
04:52the victims were in the wrong place at the wrong time."
04:56Studies pretty consistently show that people who watch a lot of crime dramas overestimate their
05:01chances of becoming a victim of crime. So it's not really surprising that a similar study by
05:06researchers from Indiana University and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill shows
05:12that people who watch Shark Week tend to overestimate their chances of getting eaten by a
05:17shark and continue to react with fear. They had 500 people watch clips from Shark Week,
05:22from violent shark attacks to sharks swimming peacefully through the water,
05:26followed by a public service announcement that talked about the need for shark conservation.
05:30Researchers discovered, shockingly, that those short messages after the violent programming
05:35didn't seem to make people any less afraid of sharks. Another study, published in Marine Policy,
05:42surveyed over 180 people on their shark knowledge and correlated that with supportive
05:47conservation efforts. No surprise, the media does play a part in sensationalizing the marine
05:52animal and causing anti-shark sentiment. So really, it seems like Shark Week is ultimately
05:58doomed to scare people, even if it shows nothing but sharks having tea parties and
06:02attending 12-step meetings, a la Finding Nemo.
06:05"'It has been three weeks since my last fish. On my honor,
06:08or may I be chopped up and made into soup.'"
06:11Because ultra-slow-motion video of airborne great white sharks and real-life shark bites
06:17aren't already more terrifying than fiction, in 2013, Discovery decided what Shark Week needed
06:23to do was make stuff up and call it a documentary. The 2013 episode, Megalodon! The Monster Shark
06:30Lives!, was Shark Week's most-watched program of the year, but it was fiction. You had to sit
06:35through the entire episode before reading the devastating disclaimer at the very end, which read,
06:41"...none of the institutions or agencies that appear in the film
06:44are affiliated with it in any way, nor have approved its contents."
06:48In fact, even the disclaimer was misleading. It said that, quote,
06:52"...certain events and characters in this film have been dramatized,
06:55that Megalodon was a real shark, and that sightings continue to this day."
07:00Basically, it just waxed on in every way without explicitly saying,
07:05what you just saw was fiction. Despite other clues that the documentary was fake,
07:09like really bad CGI and scientists who were obviously reciting scripted material,
07:15some viewers believed what they were seeing. When they learned they'd been duped,
07:20they were pretty righteously pissed off. Even so, Shark Week's executive producer,
07:25Michael Sorensen, waved off the backlash and praised the two-hour special as the,
07:29quote, "...ultimate Shark Week fantasy." But by 2015, with the network still reeling
07:34from the bad press, executives told Vulture there would be no more fake documentaries.
07:40In 2017, Shark Week promos hyped another monster event. 23-time gold medalist Michael Phelps was
07:47going to race a great white shark. Now, in all fairness, anyone who stopped to think about it
07:52for more than five seconds should have realized that it would have been impossible for Phelps
07:56to race an actual great white, even if he left out the whole part where he'd have probably gotten
08:01eaten before crossing the finish line. But, you know, ratings. Sharks don't swim in a straight
08:07line — and never mind the logistics of trying to put one in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
08:11But viewers were still pissed off, maybe because they were still smarting from the
08:15whole Megalodon thing. It's really hard to blame this one on the network. They were pretty open
08:19about the fact that this was not going to be an in-the-flesh race between actual shark and
08:25actual man. There were even pre-show interviews and publications like Vanity Fair that explained
08:30exactly how it was going to go down. But that didn't stop half the viewing population from
08:34feeling annoyed when they were told in the last three minutes of the one-hour program that the
08:39race would be a simulation. Ultimately, this story doesn't say as much about the network's
08:44drive for ratings as it does about the fact that most of the viewing population doesn't really pay
08:49that much attention to disclaimers. Or, you know, logic. Shark Week might be controversial, but it's
08:55not just something that people casually tune into if they're bored on a summer afternoon.
09:00Shark Week has cult status, like the Rocky Horror Picture Show, if Dr. Frankenfurter was a great
09:05white and Brad and Janet were a pair of hapless surfers wearing chum underpants. According to
09:10Talking Point's memo, in 2010, Stephen Colbert famously declared Shark Week to be, quote,
09:15one of the two holiest of holidays, with the other being the week after Christmas.
09:20And on an episode of 30 Rock, Tracy Morgan once gave the sage advice,
09:24"...live every week like it's Shark Week."
09:28Fans don't just watch Shark Week, they live Shark Week. Five minutes on Pinterest will give you
09:34enough Shark Week party ideas to last until the 2120 installment. Even Martha Stewart is in on
09:40the fun, with a whole list of Shark Week ideas, including shark cupcakes, shark-inspired outerwear,
09:46and a chair made out of stuffed toy sharks. Yes, a chair made out of stuffed toy sharks.
09:52Needless to say, we're still waiting for Stewart to drop a walkthrough for meat suits.