Shark Week: Discovery Channel Announces 2014 Will Be The Last; PETA Says ‘It’s About Time’

SILVER SPRING, Maryland –

President and CEO of Discovery Communications Inc., David M. Zaslav, announced today that the upcoming season of ‘Shark Week’, its 28th, will be the series finale. The once-a-year series started on July 17, 1987, and has developed a very unique cult following. Zaslav, in an early morning press conference said that more and more people, obsessed with the annual week-long event, are going out on their own and trying to make contact with sharks, which has led to more frequent shark attacks.

“We actually feel that we have created this manifestation of desire for human beings to want to go out and swim with sharks, which people are doing more and more, and we feel responsible,” Zaslav stated. “Shark Week has run its course, it has reached the point where people are actually trying to go out and make contact with these incredible, yet extremely dangerous fish, which obviously, they have no business doing.”

The number of provoked shark attacks has greatly increased in the last three years according to the International Shark Attack Committee. “The last few years people have gone out, without professional supervision, and have attempted to swim with the untamed beasts which, on several occasions, has led to what we label as a ‘provoked attack,'” said IPSA chairman Paul Hart.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has applied a gauntlet of pressure to executives at the Discovery Channel over the years to bring an end to the show. Founder Alex Pacheco has publicly stated on several occasions that the Discovery is ‘endangering sharks while making them more defensive and violent.’

“What they are doing is putting not only stupid, uninformed people at risk, but more importantly, they are putting these beautiful creatures in danger at the hands of man. They are totally promoting human interaction with sharks. This has got to stop!” Pacheco said earlier this year at a PETA convention in Mobile, Alabama.

Many PETA members believe that Pacheco is the mastermind behind Discovery waving the white flag of surrender.

“It is time for the world to stop acting macho and start listening to us, we know what we are talking about, everyone else, especially in this country, are ignorant with animals,” Longtime PETA fundraising coordinator Jennifer Bangs said. “It starts with them killing and eating innocent, loving pigs and cows, and now they’re trying to swim with sharks. They’re just going to kill and eat them, too! It is sickening. Discovery needs to be stopped. They glorify the killing of millions of crab in their idiotic show Deadliest Catch, and killing bears and moose in other shows. Finally it seems that Discovery is bowing down to PETA. The downfall of the network has begun.”

Zaslav was asked whether PETA had anything to do with the upcoming season of Shark Week being its last, he said, “Absolutely not. Those people are just on some mission to be against the world and just want to complain. We do not condone the useless harming of fish and animals, so I don’t have any idea why they would even begin to believe they deserve a voice in the matter. The organization is absolutely laughable, they need to be exposed for what the are, but that is a show we will have to be broadcast another day.” Zaslav then laughed along with the press corp, adding, “Seriously, we have plans to document and expose PETA for the joke that they are.”

The twenty-eighth and final installment of ‘Shark Week’ premiers on the Discovery Channel on Sunday, August 10th.

SILVER SPRING, Maryland –

For the 26th summer in a row, the Discovery Channel has begun to insist that new information has been learned about sharks, as they gear up for their annual Shark Week lineup of programming. For the past fews weeks, the cable channel has begun heavily promoting Shark Week programming by telling viewers in no uncertain terms that they have new information about sharks which was not available last year.

Shark Week ads currently running on the channel all play up the same angle. One 30 second spot simply shows footage of a swimming shark while Discovery Channel regular and Shark Week 2014 host Mike Rowe says:

“We’ve known about these mighty sea beasts since the dawn of time. But this year, we might finally have them figured out.”

It’s important to note that not even the Discovery Channel is claiming that sharks themselves have changed substantially in the past year. Indeed, sources close to sharks tell Empire News that, while individual sharks may have been born or died in the past year, the sharks as a species have not changed substantially in several centuries.

Discovery Channel CEO David Zaslav said in a press conference earlier this week that he was excited to get to report all the developments in the human-shark relationship to viewers each summer. Says Zaslav, “People are learning new things about sharks every day. And the public at large relies on us to bring them that information once per year in a grand celebration of knowledge. Sure, they could just keep up with any new shark information as it comes out just by using a few Yahoo! News alerts, but why go through all the trouble?”

In the same conference, Zaslav responded to critics of Shark Week, who have recently begun to allege that the week of programming is not educational at all, but simply an almost voyeuristic celebration of stories of swimmers being maimed, secretly aired under the guise of learning. Zaslav says this claim couldn’t be further from the truth but that “For the record, we will be telling all the gory details of every shark attack that took place in the past year. For learning, though, not for fun.”

Empire News was able to speak to Roger Finn, a shark currently living off the cost of Australia. Mr. Finn had not been aware of Discovery Channel’s Shark Week until we spoke to him, but once he became informed he had some strong views on the subject.

“Is this a joke? No, there isn’t new stuff to cover about sharks every year.” Said Finn. “I mean sure, we have a vibrant culture and we do lots of things with each other, but it sounds to me like all these programs are just about times that we tried to eat people, and that process really hasn’t changed in millennia.”

Zasalav claims that they really do try to incorporate at least one new fact every year during Shark Week. He says this year scientists had discovered that the long-held belief that women who were menstruating should not swim near sharks was really just an old wives’ tale.

“As our research team has discovered, even sharks have no interest in eating a woman who is on her period.” Said Zasalav.

“Not for nothing, but why exactly are you singling us out here?” Asked Finn. “You know, lots of other animals kill more people than sharks. Cows, for example. Cows kill more of you than we do. Mosquitoes? They’re like the #1 human killer of all time. I really can’t help but feel like you guys are really being jerks about this. It’s almost racist.”