Shark Week a Hit for Discovery Channel

SILVER SPRING: Discovery Channel’s 23rd annual Shark Week programming event brought in 30.8 million viewers this year, making it the most watched Shark Week in the network’s history.

From August 1 to 7, Shark Week featured six premiere programs, two of which—Ultimate Air Jaws and Into the Shark Bite—were in the top five rated Shark Week programs of all time. These shows were watched by 3.5 million and 2.9 million unique viewers, respectively.

It was not just the channel that benefited from Shark Week either. Discovery Channel’s website visitors viewed 2.4 million streams of shark-related video, a 324-percent increase in online viewership over last year (560,000). The premiere day alone drove almost the same number of video streams on Discovery’s site as all of Shark Week 2009. This year, DiscoveryChannel.com visitors watched almost 400 different Shark Week video clips. The event also had a significant presence on Facebook and Twitter.