Hark, the shark

-- Broadcasting & Cable, 8/14/2000

Discovery will once again reveal everything viewers ever wanted to know about sharks but were too busy watching wrestling to ask. Shark Week returns for its 13th season Aug. 13-20, with another intrepid Brit snorkeling casually about among the world's most efficient carnivores.

Shark Week (appended with Uncaged this year because the host will offer himself up as bait without the requisite steel-barred box), includes 21 hours of programming (some in 3-D) ending with an eight-hour marathon on Sunday, Aug. 20.

There's also a Saturday morning kids show, Who Killed Kenny, featuring a 7-year-old with an unseen, wise-cracking pet shark, plus several shorts that visit such phenomena as SharkBoy the Wrestler, the shark-tooth capital of the world, and a man who created a sharkmobile from a 1982 Nissan Sentra. Shark Weeks of yore have done solid numbers for Discovery. Shark Week 1999 averaged 826,000 households over the week for a 1.1 Nielsen rating, compared to a typical total-day average of around a 0.6.