A small white shark and a successful seal predation at Catalina Island last week. WARNING bloody footage.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Shark Week 2010 - Programming Reset?
Shark Week took an online and very public beating last year for programming that attempted to drag a savvy viewing public back to a 1970's Jaws era.
Those who supported the effort also found themselves in a similar boat. 2009 will go down as the year Shark Week was handled by executives and production companies who were divorced from the subject, cynical in their calculations, and ruthless towards programming with sharks.
Clearly the viewing public were not impressed, and neither were many in the commercial shark diving world who spoke out about this programming debacle, we were one of them.
Internally, Discovery Networks suffered a mass exodus of top media execs from the channel at the end of 2009. In part due to the blow back from Shark Week, gambling on on a cash cow summer series that failed.
This year Shark Week is back and seems to have shifted to the kind of programming that once made this "must see TV." A healthy balance between Jaws and science, with some humor thrown in courtesy of Craig Ferguson.
There are still industry rumors of at least one serious shark porn effort in SA but that remains to be seen. The early industry whispers, oracle bones, and signs all point to a return to the kind of programming that once made Shark Week great.
As I was told by a production company this spring "they may not hit it 100%, but given the fact no one over there was making any programming decisions for two months this is a good step forward".
Here's to a return to new programming with Discovery Channels Shark Week.
Those who supported the effort also found themselves in a similar boat. 2009 will go down as the year Shark Week was handled by executives and production companies who were divorced from the subject, cynical in their calculations, and ruthless towards programming with sharks.
Clearly the viewing public were not impressed, and neither were many in the commercial shark diving world who spoke out about this programming debacle, we were one of them.
Internally, Discovery Networks suffered a mass exodus of top media execs from the channel at the end of 2009. In part due to the blow back from Shark Week, gambling on on a cash cow summer series that failed.
This year Shark Week is back and seems to have shifted to the kind of programming that once made this "must see TV." A healthy balance between Jaws and science, with some humor thrown in courtesy of Craig Ferguson.
There are still industry rumors of at least one serious shark porn effort in SA but that remains to be seen. The early industry whispers, oracle bones, and signs all point to a return to the kind of programming that once made Shark Week great.
As I was told by a production company this spring "they may not hit it 100%, but given the fact no one over there was making any programming decisions for two months this is a good step forward".
Here's to a return to new programming with Discovery Channels Shark Week.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)