Last night, Discovery Channel kicked off another highly-anticipated Shark Week with a program called Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives. Instead of a programming block dedicated to researchers analyzing shark attacks, feeding frenzies, great whites or anything related to actual sharks, Discovery took a page out of the Animal Planet playbook and decided to show a fake documentary. Like Animal Planet’s hoax movie Mermaids: The Body Found, Discovery showed a completely scripted, 100% fake “documentary” about a prehistoric shark that hasn’t existed for thousands of years. Filled with “found footage” and moments that were “captured by Discovery Channel cameras”, the whole cryptozoological hunt played out like a cross between Sharknado and an episode of MonsterQuest. The only problem was, many viewers didn’t know it was completely scripted.
Shark Week fans, expecting something that had to do with actual sharks, were also upset that the self-proclaimed “World’s No. 1 nonfiction media company” showed them a fictional documentary and tried to convince them for two hours it was real. The channel’s Facebook page has become a frenzy of its own, with angry viewers complaining that after 25 years, Shark Week has finally jumped the shark …
