They take a chunk 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 scorching season.
“It is our Super Bowl,” Joseph Schneier, the SVP of Manufacturing and Growth at Discovery, informed The Submit.
He added, “It’s our best week of the summer every year. It’s often the highest-rated thing on cable that week. We owe a little credit to ‘Jaws,’ of course.”
Final yr, per Discovery, 25 million viewers tuned in to Shark Week.
He defined that the 1975 Steven Spielberg film “created this idea that sharks are super interesting, in the American consciousness.”
Schneier mentioned that shark-related programming is “the perfect kickoff to the summer. As summertime comes along in America, people think about beaches, the ocean in general, and shark stories. Thirty-seven years ago, when we started, we were following a national trend that was already happening in local news.”
Blue shark at night time within the offshore waters of the Gulf of Maine. Photograph by Brian Skerry/Nationwide Geographic Picture Assortment
Shark Week on Discovery kicks off this yr 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 so long that the latest crop of scientists that we have all grew up watching Shark Week,” he defined.
SharkFest on Nationwide Geographic began in 2012, and is at present airing with over 25 hours of shark-related programming on Nat Geo, Disney+, and Hulu.
Per Nat Geo, final yr’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 comparable to “Dancing With Sharks,” “Great White Sex Battle,” “Attack of the Devil 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, comparable to “Sharks of the North,” “Investigation Shark Attack,” “Sharks Up Close with Bertie Gregory,” and documentary specials about “Jaws” in honor of the film’s fiftieth anniversary,” comparable 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 think that that movie brought out this mysterious animal and brought it front and center,” she informed The Submit. “It became the next bit of a phenomenon over the last 50 years.”
She added that there are two predominant “lanes” of how folks really feel about sharks.
“You either became somebody who was fascinated from a biological science approach…And it spurred this momentum for the area of shark biology to thrive. I talk to a lot of shark biologists who say, ‘Actually, ‘Jaws’ spurred me to be interested in that species.’”
As for the second “lane,” of individuals’s method to sharks: “There was something to be scared for, in the ocean. I think it became something that people were fascinated about. ‘Is it coming after me? What’s my relationship to this being?’”
She added that when folks take seaside holidays, the thought of the shark has develop into “synonymous with summer.”
Is there a rivalry between Shark Week and SharkFest?
Han Vissering informed The Submit, “We try to run our own race. We want to lead, and, hopefully, people chase us, rather than us chasing after anyone else. Well done on Discovery to create Shark Week. And then, we came along.”
“We felt that there was still room for us to put together a lineup of great shark shows that had a slightly different angle, because of the access that we had with our scientists. We had a slightly different approach, 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 reveals is small, “we’re all friends.”
He added, “We believe the audience remembers who started it all…Shark programming and Shark Week are kind of synonymous now, which is amazing.”
Nonetheless, he quipped, “In some ways, it’s ‘all boats rise,’ to use a water pun.”
Schneier mentioned that for each Shark Week and SharkFest, “The important thing is we’re [both] telling great stories about these cool creatures, and pushing a message of ocean conservation.”
