I love Shark Week, and every year since it started airing on Discovery Channel, I’ve planted myself in front of the television to watch every minute of it.
So last night, I tuned in to watch the first entry in this year’s sharkstravaganza: a documentary about one of the coolest megasharks ever, the prehistoric Megalodon. This thing was freaking huge, with teeth the size of an adult human’s hand, and it is very, very extinct. Discovery’s special started out with what appeared to be “found footage” of some people on a fishing boat that gets hit and sunk by something huge … and I immediately knew something was amiss. The “found footage” was shot the way a professional photographer shoots things, not the way a vacationer holds their video camera. There was no logical way the camera could survive the salt water for the footage to be found. The footage was alleged to have been found in April … but then it got so much worse: Discovery Channel started Shark Week with a completely fake, completely made-up, completely bullshit “documentary” and they lied to their audience about it. They presented it as real.
I turned the show off after about 15 minutes, and watched Breaking Bad on Netflix to get ready for that show’s final season. But I was having a hard time staying focused, because I was angry, and I couldn’t figure out why. Why bother getting upset about yet another stupid “found footage” fake documentary passed off as real? Isn’t that pretty much par for the course on cable these days?
And then I realized why I was (and am) so angry: I care about education. I care about science. I care about inspiring people to learn about the world and universe around us. Sharks are fascinating, and megalodon was an absolutely incredible creature! Discovery had a chance to get its audience thinking about what the oceans were like when megalodon roamed and hunted in them. It had a chance to even show what could possibly happen if there were something that large and predatory in the ocean today … but Discovery Channel did not do that. In a cynical ploy for ratings, the network deliberately lied to its audience and presented fiction as fact. Discovery Channel betrayed its audience.
An entire generation has grown up watching Discovery Channel, learning about science and biology and physics, and that generation trusts Discovery Channel. We tune into Discovery Channel programming with the reasonable expectation that whatever we’re going to watch will be informative and truthful. We can trust Discovery Channel to educate us and our children about the world around us! That’s why we watch it in the first place!
Last night, Discovery Channel betrayed that trust during its biggest viewing week of the year. Discovery Channel isn’t run by stupid people, and this was not some kind of mistake. Someone made a deliberate choice to present a work of fiction that is more suited for the SyFy channel as a truthful and factual documentary. That is disgusting, and whoever made that decision should be ashamed.
If this had happened on just about any other network, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But Discovery Channel is more than just disposable entertainment on cable television. Discovery Channel inspired an entire generation to “explore your world”, and it is trusted to be truthful. Discovery Channel says its mission is to satisfy curiosity and make a difference in people’s lives by providing the highest quality content, services and products that entertain, engage and enlighten. There is nothing high quality or enlightening about deliberately misleading your audience during what is historically an informative and awesome week of programming. At the very least, Discovery should have made it very clear at the beginning that this was a “What if?” work of complete fiction, presented in a documentary format. Throwing up a 5 second disclaimer at the end of the program just isn’t good enough.
Discovery Channel has a rare chance to apologize to its audience: this year, the network is running a live aftershow with guests from the night’s programming. Someone from the network should use this platform and opportunity to address the audience, apologize for deliberately misleading them, and recommit to providing the highest quality content this week, and every other week out of the year.
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Its like their Mermaids special ( http://animal.discovery.com/tv-shows/mermaids/videos/mermaids.htm ) . They played it like it was real, Complete with a website “blocked” by the Feds.
That’s what I was thinking
Discovery used to be about science and learning. Now its all about “creating’ bogus “discoveries” not even fit for the National Enquirer
Another thing, Shark Week is a pile of re-runs. It got old to me several years ago.
I said it elsewhere, but I will echo it here – this makes me miss Jacques Cousteau that much more.
Maybe setting up an online petition might be merited. I’d do it, but my last petition got 2 sigs, and one was mine. ^_^
From the man himself:
I actually had the same feeling when watching last night Wil. It was a bit disappointing, and I changed channels too.
As a game dev studio owner making edutainment I understand Discovery’s concept of using fiction to attract a new audience to a subject. However, the ‘lie’ as you put it, did feel exactly like that. I felt while watching that rather than trying to ‘entertain’ me, they were trying to ‘educate’ me with a bundle of lies that they were trying to pass off as fact.
Not cool – they definitely didn’t follow rule 1: “Don’t be a dick.”
I agree, Wil. I almost wonder if the show should have been dropped onto TLC (which apparently still means “The Learning Channel” but somehow hosts shows like – Honey Boo Boo? & My Teen is Pregnant and So Am I? [wow, both of those are real titles].
It is unnerving, disappointing, and shameful how far these people will go to garner a wider audience in the name of revenue.
We demand an apology!
I saw the last dozen minutes or so and was amazed for a while. I didn’t see the orginal ‘footage’ discussed, but it was obviously crap by the end, although I was taken in for a while. I love Shark Week and look forward to shows like those filmed in South Africa, that one series that was on in the fall about them tagging the big Whites. Loved it! Re-runs of River Monsters in shark mode. New shows.
What you really missed was the even WORSE show that followed, and alleged talk show that included comments from a comedian in a shark outfit. Yes, it was THAT bad.
I look forward to Shark Week, too, Wil. I look forward to actually LEARNING THINGS! (sorry for all the caps, I’m just revved up.) Thank you for saying this, and I hope the 2014 Sweeps Week, I mean, Shark Week will be better. It could hardly be worse!
I agree with your anger Wil Wheaton!
Over drinks a few days ago, my neighbors eagerly told me about the “fact” that mermaids have been proven to exist. Yup, the source of their “knowledge” was another Discovery Channel docufiction called “Mermaids: The Body Found”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mermaids:_The_Body_Found
Seriously. Geesh.
I completely agree with you. One of my best friends is an evolutionary biologist and she gets very angry when Discovery Channel (and other channels like it) air programmes that are out of date. For example, programmes where, since the programme was made, studies have discovered evidence that disproves the original conclusions in the programme. She says this is misleading as people tend to give quite a lot of credence to Discovery Channel as a vector for the truth and are less likely to question the things presented on these obsolete programmes. She thinks that Discovery Channel should preface these programmes and put in their credits some words to give the date when the programme was made and that advances in knowledge since then may render some of the contents no longer correct. And I agree with her too.
Thank you for posting this Wil. I was just recently explaining to my children that anything we present as fact, should indeed be fact. They should be able to substantiate it, and present evidence if challenged. It is shocking when a trusted source throws a curve ball like this. I hope the public response is big enough that they do apologize for this.
I’ve felt Discovery has been slipping for several years. A lot of their shows these days seem to be about white guys doing backwoods type stuff. And Naked and Afraid? How is that not a gimmick? Is it actually educational at all?
The only reason I got extended cable was for Discovery, and now I almost never watch it.
Prior to reading this, I was in a long personal quiet rant on the same subject…and Amish Mafia…and the rest of the industry. Reduced to 140-ish characters, I boiled it down to this on Twitter: “I live in an age where the most popular information & entertainment are neither the truth nor fiction, but fiction posing as the truth.” And yes, shame on Discovery for making it worse.
I started watching that show probably just after you turned it off. The rest of the show was dubiously suspect of wool over the eyes as well. I found myself internally commenting on little things that were easily added to fool the viewer through cheap flashing lights (IE the underwater sonar used to see sharks and such in the area that used horrible 8-bit graphics). The after show was fun but did nothing for credibility…especially with the addition of Tickle from Moonshiners, the shirtless sidekick and televised shit-facing through moonshine taste-testing.
I then saw the beginning of the show and immediately thought I was watching the “Paranormal Activity” of shark shows and immediately dismissed it as fodder for alcoholic conspiracy theorists when they find the camera. No way in even imaginary Hell that camera would have survived with such clear video.
Yup..this show was beyond terrible…it was a crock.
I won’t be holding my breath for an apology. I was incredibly dismayed for all of the reasons that you stated, however, it perhaps doesn’t come as much of a shock to me as it appears to you. Have you taken a look at the regular programming of the Discovery Channel lately? I think we are well past the days of making “a difference in people’s lives by providing the highest quality content, services and products that entertain, engage and enlighten.”
They might as well opened with “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.” 🙂
Thanks, Wil, for saying this so well. I’ve been thinking about the breach-of-trust involved in this — programming drift happens to a lot of stations, and thus we have the History Channel not doing much history, Arts & Entertainment isn’t anymore, it’s just A&E, TLC has abandoned any pretense of their former life as The Learning Channel, IFC isn’t only airing independent films anymore, MTV hardly ever shows music videos, and the list goes on and on. These folks aren’t altruistic, really: they’re running a business, and they alter programming based on what generates the most revenue.
But Discovery Networks, despite some corporate missteps (see: TLC, the two “Mermaid” shows on Animal Planet that were the template for last night’s Megalodon), generally kept Discovery Channel, and particularly Shark Week, focused on factual, if sensationalized (really, it’s hard not to sensationalize sharks because, well, they’re sharks), shows celebrating sharks and all the wonder they inspire.
So it’s a huge disappointment when they chose to LEAD OFF their premiere week of “event television” with something phony, and not only that, easily proven to be phony (I had it sussed out in about 5 minutes and two Google searches – there was no fishing charter sunk with all hands off the coast of Cape Town in April of this year, and “Collin Drake” isn’t a marine biologist — the only ones I found were an indie musician in Utah and a USAF technician). And then they compounded it by presenting it as real, and not even SUGGESTING that it was wholly fabricated.
It was no more real than “Sharknado”.
And that’s why I’m sad. Which is why I’m also angry at Discovery Channel for their deception. It’s one thing for a CGI Snuffy the Seal (and anyone with any intelligence whatsoever gets a metachuckle at Snuffy’s name given the context) to get eaten in the promo ads. It’s quite another for the channel to throw its reputation into the chum bucket.
I think they’ve full well put their reputation into their own fictionally created chum cannon!
I felt the same way when The Learning Channel started airing reality shows.
Unfortunately this kind of thing is what has turned me off the Discovery Channel, well this and “reality tv”. Im so tired of fishing, crabbing and gold mining. These shows are no longer interesting, as we have learned the processes, and dangers that come with these professions. I miss shows like Dirty Jobs. Every show was Mike Rowe doing something different, and I learn A LOT of things I never knew. Shark Week has turned into a spectacle, more that a learning experience. I didnt watch last year, and Im not going to watch this year.
Very similar to the “Mermaids: The Body Found” shitstorm from a while ago, except I’m pretty sure that was worse, because at least megalodons existed at some point. *Please* please get drunk sometime and watch it (and hilariously live-tweet it) – I defy to do so without your jaw dropping at its stupefying awfulness. Although, if the integrity of the Discovery Channel matters to you, I’d have someone around while you watch it to keep you from ragepunching through your tv, or revive you when you have a stupidity induced stroke. It’s probably one of the worst things that’s ever been on tv, and I’m including shows dedicated to glorifying moon landing deniers. Please do the internet a favor and film a reaction video of you watching this insultingly bad POS show, because I’m sure it would be far funnier and probably more educational that most of the drivel actually on the Discovery Channel these days.
I think Discovery jumped that shark (oh, so clever) years ago. Once upon a time, Discovery and The History Channel both had great programming. I really can’t remember the last time either channel had much worthwhile.
There is ONE show that makes Discovery worthwhile: MythBusters. That’s the only reason I watch it anymore.
And yet, every year or so, the Republicans tell us we don’t need PBS any more because we’ve got all these other channels that do quality scientific and nature and educational shows. Riiiiiiiiiiight.
As long as there’s a profit motive, “educational” TV will sink to the level that brings in the most advertising dollars, which means crap like this.
More reason to support public broadcasting.
well put! I completely agree. This sort of bullshit is starting to become more and more frequent. It’s getting harder to find good educational programming that isn’t trying to make it ‘cooler’ or something. Dear hollywood- science is already cool!!
Wil, The Discovery Channel presents “Amish Mafia” as if it’s anything other than pure fiction. They gave up being an educational channel long ago.
Maybe they thought Megashark was real…… 🙂
Discovery has been pretty awful and getting worse for a little while now, though. Amish Mafia? Really? It’s just awful.
All ‘documentary’ channels owe all viewers apologies for everything they’ve done over the past 20 years.
I’m not sure what you expect from a channel showing the likes of: Amish Mafia, Man vs. Wild, Property Wars, and Texas Car Wars. Seriously, look at this: http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows. With the rare exception, like Mythbusters, these shows are not about science or education. Discovery, like Animal Planet and NatGeo, gave up on education long ago and are now about thrills and drama, like every other chanel (don’t get me started on “news” networks). This is just more blatant than most of their fare.
Ugh. Because of that mermaid mockumentary they aired, my co-worker honestly believes that mermaids exist. Because it was on DISCOVERY CHANNEL.
Discovery Channel, History Channel, SyFy channel, TLC…these channels are the reason I cancelled my cable years ago. None of them show anything close to what they were founded to show. How many stupid “ancient aliens” shows are on History, and since when is wrestling science fiction? (I’ll give it fiction, I will NOT give it science fiction!) And since when has anyone learned anything useful from a “reality” show.
TV simply isn’t worth it anymore. If you want decent programming you have to look to Canada or Australia or Britain. If you want decent news you have to look to other countries as well. It’s part of the culture of dumbing down America that the media seems to be playing to. They’re trying to entertain the lowest common denominator, and it’s disgusting.
I like books. Books don’t treat you like you’re stupid.
Pisses me off, because I honestly thought the Mermaids thing was real and some kind of coverup because I missed the blurb at the beginning. I was more on the ball this time and it already seemed fake to me, because “facts” changes every 5 minutes or so. Seriously, when the fuck did Discovery Channel become Mockery Channel?
I had the same thought about this last night, but managed to turn it off in the first 2 minutes. I’m angry angry angry. I’m saying it everywhere, “I’m as mad as Hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.”
Apparently the ratings last night were some of the best, ever for Shark Week so I’d expect a sequal before an apology. If you watch crap, they’ll keep producing crap.
They need to make an apology for the live show as well.
I understand the irritation, but honestly guys, this ship sailed a long time ago… If you’re watching any of the standard educational channels: Science, Discovery, History, Learning, do yourself a favor and just stop. You’ve been ingesting garbage for years. These channels were crap when I was in high school in the late 90s, and they have not and are not getting any better. Stop rotting your brain and telling yourself it’s education 🙁
PBS/Nova is still pretty good. There are a ton of free educational websites out there now a days. Check out science podcasts by actual, you know, scientists. There are a ton of them, and they update weekly or bi-weekly… with hour long discussions of topics related to their fields. iTunesU… Khan… You really don’t have to limit yourself to the absolute garbage that are cable “educational” channels anymore.
I mean, what, they apologize then go back to being complete crap. Their standard has been terrible for ages now. You need a time machine and a baseball bat to fix it at this point.
(un)Fortunately, this is a quirk of the system. Discovery is owned by a publicly traded company. All actions of a publicly traded company must go towards making the shareholder more money (in the long term, and more recently important, the very near term). Its *ILLEGAL* to do anything else.
If this sensational fiction is going to make more money than a true show, then they are required to push that show, monetize it,and move forward. Sticking to the honest truth won’t make more money in the short term. (who cares about the long term right? sell your stock before then)
I don’t know if we can ever expect accountability from Discovery, with it being a public company.
(ref: http://corporate.discovery.com/discovery-news/discovery-communications-begins-trading-as-a-publi/)
http://corporate.discovery.com/
Discovery’s corporate website has, right at the very top in bold print, “The World’s #1 Nonfiction Media Company.” I get that they need to make money for the shareholder, but surely there is some restriction on the type of product it produces, to avoid creating the direct opposite of what their brand explicitly advertises as being its product.
Go home, Discovery Channel, you are drunk.
They made huge ratings with Mermaids: The Body Found and convinced a bunch of uneducated people that it was real. They tried to repeat that and it failed miserably. There are more people who want to believe in fairy tales than reality. I watched the whole mess and my husband and I were yelling at the screen and waving our arms around wildly. I felt cheated.
First and foremost this was a complete insult to faithful Shark Week watchers who have seen enough SW specials to have the correct mindset to determine when an interview/event is staged/scripted with actors vs the true experts—especially when the mockumentary follows up a REAL LIFE special—Air Jaws.
Secondly, what does Discovery even gain by creating completely fabricated events to fool it’s viewers and never fully admits that the entire thing was scripted (instead of just “dramatized”)? Just a bunch of misled viewers who recently jumped on the Shark Week bandwagon.
Discovery lost its educational focus a L-O-N-G time ago. Amish Mafia? Blood and Oil? Pot Cops? Even everyone else’s favorite, Deadliest Catch… what’s so educational about these shows? Nothing. The Learning Channel is no better. The majority don’t watch anything that they could actually learn something from anymore. The more stupid and outrageous, the better the ratings. Maybe you could start your own educational channel? That would be cool…
More and more it seems as if the Discovery Channel and the other channels in the Discovery Family are working hard to be this generation’s Barnum’s American Museum.
Discovery owed it’s viewers an apology since I believe 2002 when it had that program on how the Earth would change after humans left it. With giant forest-walking (and smaller tree swinging) squid. That entire program was about as scientifically accurate as a McDonalds hamburger, and Discovery just went downhill from there.
This is why I stopped watching Discovery, History, TLC, and even the Science channel. So much of it is bunk and sensationalism. The last thing that almost fooled me was History’s Mysteries: the episode on Crete. I fell for it until reading the reviews.
The good thing about that was the reviews turned me onto an interesting history lecture series on Amazon by a professor Neidinger. so that was fun. I never thought I’d pay to hear lectures 🙂
I still watch NOVA and Nova Science Now! of course. 🙂
This is the precise reason we don’t watch Discovery any more. It was great for my boys when they were younger. Now that my daughter is the age they were all of the programming is reality or mocumentary. It is so difficult to find anything educational and intelligent.
No surprise to me at all. Discovery did the same thing with that mermaid documentary. I haven’y tuned into their family of channels since then. If they can’t be bothered to make shows about the world, which is full of exciting, entertaining and interesting REAL things, I can’t be bothered with Discovery.
I’m a long time fan of yours, Wil, and i find a lot of stuff on The Discovery Channel downright silly. However, I gotta call you out on this one.
“Discovery Channel did not do that. In a cynical ploy for ratings, the network deliberately lied to its audience and presented fiction as fact. Discovery Channel betrayed its audience.”
No they did not. They presented disclaimers stating that the show was not real. Several times, in fact. This show was not meant to educate, nor did it present its purpose to be educational. The mockumentary format was not a deception. It was a stylistic choice. One might as well decry “The Blair Witch Saga” or “The Onion” for making the same choice.
I, like you, am passionate about education. It’s why I am a great proponent of literacy and access to wide ranging reading materials. (one might find relying on the TV for a passive education a bit of a poor choice) It’s also why I see shows like this as an opportunity to teach children to look for details and apply skepticism. I also see it as great fodder for fueling the imagination.
I hate to say it, but being offended and demanding an apology over this is about as silly as the Discovery Channel’s choice to make “Duck Dynasty” a thing.
I completely and wholeheartedly agree with you. And they should’ve, at the very least, included a disclaimer at the beginning saying “This is all fake and it never happened.” However, they have done this at least four times before.
In 2004, when I was in the third grade, Animal Planet aired a special titled “The Last Dragon.” It examines the evolution of dragons, and follows a scientist as she examines the frozen remains of a dragon discovered in a cave in the Carpathian Mountains. It was built upon the question “If dragons never existed, why do all these cultures, that had no contact with each other, have stories about them?” It was totally fake, had no disclaimer at the beginning (that I remember), but the premiere was followed by a half-hour special, detailing how the dragons were designed, why certain traits and attributes were chosen, and what from the animal kingdom inspired them. It was convincing enough (I believed it as long as I could because who the hell doesn’t want to live in a world where dragons existed?), but Animal Planet and Discovery were more upfront about the fiction.
From 2008-2010, Animal Planet began aired one of my favorite shows, Lost Tapes. Based on the “found footage” genre, each episode presented people encountering cryptozoological and paranormal creatures, including Big Foot, vampires, zombies, the Mothman, werewolves, and even aliens. A horror show, it was fantastically fake. Still, at the beginning of each episode and at least one commercial break, it had a disclaimer saying “The following is based on a creature that has been spotted and accounted throughout history and may or may not exist. However, the events depicted are entirely fictional.”
Cut to 2012. Animal Planet, and a month later Discovery, aired a special called “Mermaids: The Body Found.” It was done in the same way. It examined mermaids in a scientific way, and presented it in a convincing enough way to work for the special. However, it did look fake. Specifically, there’s a moment where they show a video that two young boys supposedly shot around 2005 on a cell phone camera, but the mermaid is obviously CGI and you can tell the video was shot in HD and downgraded to look like a 2005 cell-phone video. And I feel like that’s the right way to do something like that: Make it convincing enough to work in the special itself, but fake enough so you know it’s fake. (I should say that I think I did first watch it on an HD TV, and it fooled my mother who watched it on a SD TV, so that may be a factor.)
Just over a month ago, Animal Planet aired a sequel titled “Mermaids: The New Evidence.” Since I haven’t seen it, I won’t talk about it.
Now, there wasn’t a disclaimer at the beginning, like the dragon special, but they probably did the same thing with both the mermaid and Megalodon specials. I will bet my first born child that, if you were to look at the end credits of the Megalodon special, you’ll find a disclaimer, much like the mermaid special, saying “Though based on this real thing, the preceding events were completely fictionalized.” Was it the right thing to do to put it at the end of the tiny end credits that no one ever pays attention to so you have to freeze frame it to even read it? No. It should’ve been after every commercial break, read out by a voice-over. But there won’t be an apology, since they did already said it was fake. It’s the equivalent of telling someone important news by whispering it to them at the the other side of the room as they’re sleeping, but they did say it. And besides, even with disclaimers, someone would be believe it as a real doc. Candle Cove is one of my favorite Creepypasta stories is “Candle Cove.” It is obviously fake and made up, yet there are still people who believe it’s a real children’s show that aired.
Again, I do agree. It isn’t really Discovery’s place to air stuff like this, and present it as fact. (For god sakes, they aired Shark City with a disclaimer!) But they have done this type of thing in the past with some success. It was only a matter of time that they would do this sort of thing for Shark Week. Let’s just hope that, with a lot of the other specials, it just quietly goes into the abyss after a couple years.
*as I begin typing* “Gee, I’d better proofread this for mistakes before I post this!”
*as I’m about to finish typing* “Don’t forget to proofread! You always forget.”
*finish typing* *immediately hit send* “… Und shit!”
I agree wholeheartedly, Wil. Unfortunately, they’ll NEVER apologize. Just like they’ll never apologize for the shameless crap that is Toddlers and Tiaras and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, and they’ll never apologize for that unbelievably mean spirited Nik Wallenda ratings stunt involving your friend Adam Savage and his cohort Jamie Hyneman, and they’ll never apologize for giving the axe to Trading Spaces and therefore turning their TLC network into a shameless pile of horse droppings.
So, they just lose me as a viewer. So what, you might say? I actually pay MONEY to buy Mythbusters episodes, Season Passes on iTunes, etc. Unfortunately, they not only lose me as a viewer but also as a customer. Which is sad, really, but not exactly unprecedented given the giant middle finger they wag at all of their viewers.
To anyone at the Discovery Channel who might be reading this: Wheaton’s Law still applies. Unfortunately for you, you are in gross violation of such. To quote one of the most shamelessly ugly shows ever in the television industry, “You are the weakest link. Goodbye.”