Shark Week Snaps Up Ratings Records for Discovery Channel
EXCLUSIVE: When the dust settled, Discovery Channel’s Shark Week 2013 emerged as the most watched in the franchise’s 26-year history. An average of 2.12 million people watched Shark Week in primetime, Discovery says, and nearly 29 million unique viewers sampled the orgy of shark-dom. Sunday’s kickoff faux-documentary Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives survived the week as the most-watched program in the franchise’s history, with an average of nearly 5 million tuning in.
Shark Week was TV’s highest-rated franchise among 18-to-49-year-old guys last week, beating all cable nets and broadcast ones too — even NBC, with its returning NFL Sunday night preseason football. Overall, the franchise coughed up Discovery Channel’s best-ever week among 18-49. That’s because Shark Week programming bagged the highest-rated premieres in franchise history for their respective nights in the demo, starting with Megalodon on Sunday, Voodoo Sharks (Monday), I Escaped Jaws (Tuesday), Great White Serial Killer (Wednesday), Alien Sharks (Thursday) and Great White Gauntlet (Friday).