Shark weak: the Discovery Channel's famous week is sinking to tabloid tactics

[wtmusic]

"The annual Shark Week television marathon puts many marine biologists and shark enthusiasts on edge. We love that it draws attention to sharks and that it sometimes includes some real science and conservation. We hate the way it's done: maximum menace and blood, a two-note soundtrack and, occasionally, a gross indifference to facts.

The Discovery Channel, which bills itself as the '#1 nonfiction media company' opened this year's Shark Week with a fictional 'documentary'. Confused? Apparently, the producers were, too. They opened the documentary these words:

None of the institutions or agencies that appear in the film are affiliated with it in any way, nor have approved its contents. Though certain events and characters in this film have been dramatized, sightings of "'Submarine' continue to this day.

Megalodon was a real shark. Legends of giant sharks persist all over the world. There is still a debate about what they may be.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/07/shark-week-discovery-channel-fail

Discovery markets titillating sightings of a shark-sasquatch as a "documentary". Fail.

[hatrack]

1. No way!

[d_r]

2. ok I watched the second hour of it this morning

(I didn't see the beginning) and I didn't know until just now that it was fake. Doh.

[PADemD]

3. I watched the whole thing.

The video from the ship wreck seemed fake. But the rest was somewhat believable. I'm angry that another "Mermaid" was produced. I'll never watch one of Discovery's documentaries again.

[d_r]

5. me either

I didn't see the beginning, but I was going to go back and look for it on demand after seeing the end, but won't now. At one point it said "18 days after shipwreck" and I thought, "damn, how'd they get all that together so fast, what kind of funding do they have to throw around" but I wasn't as sceptical as I should have been.

[adirondacker]

4. Turning into the same bullshitters that claimed Psychics and the paranormal were real in 70's.

As if reality weren't strange enough.

[hatrack]

6. Shark Week is to Discovery as Honey Boo-Boo is to The "Learning" Channel

No time better than now to catch up on all those books you meant to read . . .

[adirondacker]

7. I turned off cable 5 years ago and do not miss it in the least. My main entertainment is HiFi and

reading journals, and occasionally watching a movie.

My previous sig line was a Woody Allen quote "Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad tv". I don't wonder why the country is in the shape it's in anymore. Cable can't die soon enough.

[frogmarch]

8. Some of the episodes are informative, BUT

most of them are scarier and more violent than the movie Jaws.

The episode that really pissed me off was the one about a supposed Megalodon attacking and sinking a South African charter fishing boat this past April. Remember the fakeumentary about Mermaids a while back? The Megalodon one is another crock of Discovery Channel shit.

http://www.snopes.com/critters/malice/megalodon.asp

FALSE

Fake story, fake researchers, fake...well you get the picture. Good rant about it at Snopes.