Have You Been Watching “Shark Week”?
For most people, the most important television this month was the Olympics. For me, it’s Shark Week, which started Sunday on the Discovery Channel. Ashley Fetters investigates the origin and evolution of TV’s most famous week, now in its 25th year and thus “the longest-running cable TV programming event in history.” It started as an idea on a cocktail napkin in 1988, and has matured ever so slowly since then as the Discovery Channel has tried to make sure Shark Week never jumped the shark. The most recent change has been the transition to ultra high-speed cameras, but there have been other shifts as well.
