What Happened To Shark Week – How Discovery Channel Has Ruined It

Shark week is happening right now on Discovery Channel but a lot of dedicated Discovery Channel fans are upset with the network for ruining this annual celebration. Find out why here.

Shark week started back in 1998 and people liked to watch the shows because they were full of interesting and informative shows discussing sharks, their breeding, their lives, hunting styles, different types of sharks and yes, even shark attacks on humans. Now, Discovery Channel has introduced several new shows that are completely fake. What is worse, many of the people who are watching Shark Week actually think these shows are true, and there is a Megalodon swimming around in the ocean. The channel actually had to come forward and say that the video of a shark in Lake Ontario was fake, after officials began to worry about what to do with the shark. This brought up the question y many in Canada if Discovery Channel went too far with their guerrilla marketing.

What happened to the days when you just got to enjoy shows about sharks? I watched a show on the Smithsonian Channel, called "Shark Girl," that followed the life of Madison Stewart, a 20 year old girl whose ambition is to save sharks. The show follows her as she talks with legislators, countries that protect sharks, areas that have drastically lower shark populations and why we should take shark meat out of our diets. After watching the show, I never knew how much mercury actually gets into shark meat that people all over the world eat. I learned something. It wasn't fake, it wasn't dramatized, it was raw and unapologetic. This is the kind of show that Discovery Channel should get back to showing during Shark Week. Stop the stupid fake documentaries, fake stories and everything else that is ruining shark week.

A lot of fans feel the same way that I do. If you go to Discover Channel's Facebook page, may fans have started commenting and complaining about how many fake shows they have, and how they have stopped helping people understand sharks better. Instead, they are sensationalizing them as aggressive, bloodthirsty murderers. Here are a few of the best comments.

Christine wrote:

Dear Discovery Channel (ie, NOT the Bizarre-Reality-Science-Wannabe-Channel): Sharks are endangered & being murdered at massive daily rates by mostly Asian fools who think their fins are aphrodisiacs or rednecks who think it's cool to kill them on NBC Sports Network.... And, btw, the Submarine crapumentary is absolutely appalling.

Steve wrote:

Fake CGI garbage, sorry excuse for sharkweek. I feel bad for all the people that believe what they are seeing on your program!!

Tanya wrote:

I love shark week when it is real shows...not this fake stuff. Please go back to the real deal next season discovery channel. We want to be educated about sharks and not turn more people into believers that sharks are like the jaws movies. The shark populations of several varieties are disappearing rapidly. If you use this platform for ratings instead of educating then we will have more needlessly killed because they are misrepresented or demonized further.

What do you think? Has Discovery Channel ruined Shark Week for you? Or do you enjoy the sensationalized stories about killer Great Whites?