Shark Week: Discovery Channel Announces 2014 Will Be The Last; PETA Says âItâs About Timeâ
President and CEO of Discovery Communications Inc., David M. Zaslav, announced today that the upcoming season of âShark Weekâ, its 28th, will Â 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.âWe 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,â Zaslav stated. âShark 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.âThe number of provoked shark attacks has greatly increased in the last three years according to the International Shark Attack Committee. âThe 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 âprovoked attack,ââ 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 âendangering sharks while making them more defensive and violent.â âWhat 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!â Pacheco said earlier this year at a PETA convention in Mobile, Alabama.Â Many PETA members believe that Pacheco is the mastermind behind Discovery waving the white flag of surrender.âIt 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,â Longtime PETA fundraising coordinator Jennifer Bangs said. âIt starts with them killing and eating innocent, loving pigs and cows, and nowÂ theyâreÂ trying to swim with sharks. Theyâre 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,Â and killing bears and moose in other shows. Finally it seems that Discovery is bowing down to PETA. TheÂ downfall of the network has begun.âZaslav was asked whether PETA had anything to do with the upcoming season of Shark Week being its last, he said, âAbsolutely 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 donât 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 broadcastÂ another day.â Zaslav then laughed along with the press corp, adding, âSeriously, we have plans to document and expose PETA for the joke that they are.âThe twenty-eighth and final installment of âShark Weekâ premiers on the Discovery Channel on Sunday, August 10th.