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| It’s a bad week to be Discovery |
They say the so-called “mockumentary” about a fictional monster shark called Megalon is the kind of mistake that makes people ask: “What were they thinking?” As part of its annual summer Shark Week festival the Discovery network apparently set out to make viewers believe that it had evidence that Megalon existed. People are furious. Many of them have correctly skewered Discovery for a collapse of journalism in the interests of bucks. The opening night program had the largest audience of any such program in 26 years — 4.8 million viewers. It was, as some Discovery members said, programming better suited to channels that sell scary “Martian stuff” to simple people who frankly don’t know any better. But here was the attempted hoodwinking of a high IQ and well-heeled audience. Discovery spent millions promoting opening night with its Snuffy the seal commercials in which a rescued seal about to be returned to the sea is eaten by a shark. In his defense Michael Sorensen, Discovery’s senior director of programming. said: “The stories have been out there for years, and with 95 percent of the ocean unexplored, who really knows?”
