Shark Week 2012

An Interview With:
Brooke Runnette, Discovery Channel’s Director of Special Projects
by Abbie Bernstein

Sharks! Got your attention, right? Some people love them, some people are terrified by them, a lot of people feel both ways simultaneously, but there are few who find the toothy, water-bound creatures uninteresting.

Sharks, even the enormous Great Whites, are fish, not mammals. As a species, they have been around for tens of millions of years; the Great White is believed to have existed in something like its current form for at least two million. The Discovery Channel has been capitalizing on human fascination with sharks for decades with SHARK WEEK, which celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary on the air August 12-18. To celebrate this milestone, Discovery throws a party for the Television Critics Association poolside at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, complete with shark-shaped laser lights in the swimming pool and footage projected onto the side of the hotel. There is something undeniably impressive, not to mention surreal, about seeing a school of sharks swimming across an eight-story building.
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