When Shark Week Lied to Everyone: MEGALODON LIVES | Billiam

yeah this is billiam sharks if there was anything that could compete with my dinosaur obsession as a kid it was my shark obsession growing up in south florida i spent a lot of time around the water and to this day my fondest memories are of seeing sharks when snorkeling or around our boat when fishing that's right in an alternate reality i grew up to be a guy who poses with that fish on tinder i just narrowly avoided it sharks are just cool have you ever seen a goblin shark i would like to as a shark fan i was always surfing around the discovery channel during the summer waiting for shark week to start the annual shark themed programming event discovery puts out every year one week of just shark content it's it's great shark week has aired and produced so much shark programming that really diving into it and tracking down everything shark week has aired would be nearly impossible shark week has been going on for over 30 years it is the longest running annual tv event ever in recent memory shark week's biggest splash in the pop culture consciousness was when discovery channel lied to everyone the caribbean's great this time of year spin on around and we'll go sure y'all know megalodon it's a big shark like a 60-foot shark that went extinct two to three million years ago but in 2013 shark week began its lineup with a hoax megalodon the monster shark lives in which they created fake footage interviews and photographic evidence to make it seem like the extinct predator was still swimming in these oceans so let's talk about shark week it's history and history of controversy before finally looking at when shark week totally jumped the shark and just started making up actually you know what i'm not really sure if i want to talk about sharks today [Music] don't get me started about sharks discovery channel launched in 1985 with initial investment from a few holding companies and the british broadcasting corporation who along with other foreign nature documentary producers sold discovery channel the rights to thousands of hours of nature and other scientific programming that hadn't ever aired in the united states before the first shark week came about in 1988 because network executives just noticed shark theme programming tended to do better duh and with the never ending stream of pop culture media and social paranoia about sharks it just made sense to capitalize on the summer beach season the first shark week program was called caged in fear an australian production about testing mechanical shark cages i found a lot of early shark week program to be difficult to track down apparently this was only released on vhs in the uk you can't really understand what made shark week shark week without first talking about jaws the first host of shark week was peter benchley the author of the original novel jazz is a movie with a cultural impact that cannot be overstated it began the trend of releasing big crowd-pleasing movies during the summer season it's literally the first summer blockbuster but while many film fans can't speak highly enough of this elevated b-movie the film's impact rippled outside of the film world it's quote the film that still makes audiences afraid to go in the water to many environmentalists and shark specialists jaws is the movie that gave sharks a bad name which to this day still causes roadblocks to conservational efforts sharks we have to protect them i say wait a minute wait sharks are not bloodthirsty animals they don't attack humans on purpose most shark bites are on humans they're non-fatal and they're exploratory in nature from the shark's perspective which albeit if your arm gets exploratorially bit off that still hurts are you food no sorry but you know you can't blame the shark humans pose a massive threat to the survival of many shark species with commercial fishing and the global shark fin trade which literally sees the shark being removed from the water having their fins cut off and being thrown back into the sea to die shark week's programming is very much in the shadow of jaws shark weeks back dark week had the reputation of violent and sensationalistic content with a lot of graphic reenactments of real shark attacks this peaked in 2002 when shark week crews got lucky when one of their researchers they were filming got very unlucky and had his calf bit by a bull shark the first time shark week ever aired footage of a real shark bite shark eats a lot of different things and it's going to test a lot of things and the way it tests things is it bites and although the aftermath is very graphic like this dude will look like a torn up wet paper towel in about 15 seconds that's just a sweet little curious shark remember we go into their habitat not the other way around it's not their fault they got a bite force of tear your leg open shark week's pursuits of killer sharks isn't always reflective of reality nothing illustrates this better than shark week's very own top 10 deadliest sharks the punch line they couldn't even come up with 10 sharks that have killed people half the sharks on the list have not been responsible for a human fatality that's not to say that shark week hasn't aired or produced good programming during the second shark week shark week the revenge discovery was already airing programming which sort of tried to rehabilitate the shark's image early shark week content also included programming like the man who loved sharks which wanted to look at sharks as something other than just vicious eating machines after all sharks do not spend most of their time eating meaning that focusing on attacks and their ability to kill is just a small sliver of their lives and if you're producing like 10 hours of content a year like shouldn't you expand out on what you focus on i mean i'll be at the most visually spectacular moments of their lives and are when they're killing things but like they do other things in the past 20 years shark week's most famous programming has been their air jaws special which solely focus on the ability of sharks specifically great white sharks to breach out of the water to attack their prey a maneuver called a polaris breach which these specials always remind you of since 2001 when the first air jaws special aired which captured a world record shark jump there have been 10 air jaws specials you can say discovery has been jumping the shark for years who would win air jaws or air bud i was never really a fan of the air jaws specials my favorite were the mythbusters episodes where they tested out several myths spawned from the jaws movies i also really liked the dock they aired in 2005 shark hunter chasing the great white it's about the real life sports fisherman who is the basis for captain quint in jaws frank mundus it's a reflective piece as mundus looks back on his life only a few years before his death you can really tell he has a deep care for these animals acknowledging their beauty and wonder and even expressing sadness about killing them for his chartering business but of course the documentary gives him the opportunity to interact with these creatures one last time without harming them his chartering business had to close due to the decline of shark populations as a result of the rise in global fishing and finning industries i also really loved the special on prehistoric sharks from 1998 which was included on this dvd set i had oh they hire a nature artist to create paleoart based on the remains of prehistoric shark teeth his designs are way off from what researchers suspect they may have actually looked like but it's also really enlightening because it explains how speculative paleo art can really be sharks are made mostly of cartilage don't have a single bone in their body so the only fossilized remains that have been found our teeth in vertebrae which can give really valuable insight on where the shark lived what it ate when it was alive and how big it was probably but it leaves a lot to the imagination about appearance also this special was released on video now meaning you can watch this like on an airplane or something however starting in 2012 discovery really wanted to turn over a new fin put a lot more focus on conservational efforts and current innovations in scientifically based shark research at the time discovery was making connections in washington-based environmentalist circles and trying to recruit a lot of new talent and even financially support research to give legitimacy to shark week's programming consistently 2012 shark week is a really interesting year for the network for its 25th anniversary shark week was hosted by none other than philip defranco i'm not even kidding yes that is the right way to start off shark week at this time his production company was owned by discovery but that's not what's important what's important is discovery needs a new social media personality named billiam to host shark week the programming in 2012 featured such shows as how jaws changed the world and shark fight which isn't about any group of shark attack survivors but a group of shark attack survivors attacking back who are now fighting for the con oh my god for the conservation of sharks i just realized the way i wrote that makes it sound like they're fighting the sharks again no they're fighting on behalf of the sharks great white highway is about the day-to-day activities of great whites living off the coast of california and in the interest of revitalizing the shark's image mythbusters counted down and explained 25 myths associated with sharks while there was still a strong focus on entertainment with 2012's programmings there was also shows like air jaws apocalypse and the year ended with shark week's top 25 bites the following clip is graphic to say the least and may be disturbing to some viewers which is why it's awesome 2012 definitely had stronger themes of education and conservation hey today's video is sponsored by 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billion to get 15 off of your order try them out if you want to help out the channel and there's even a 45 day free return window so if you don't like them it's no risk so check it out see ya well there were good signs of the future of shark week's reputation over on the discovery channel's own sister networked animal planet things were getting a little weird in may of 2012 animal planet famously aired its fake mermaid documentary which took on the style of an expose about a team of scientists played by actors who supposedly discovered mermaids it featured a speculative take on how mermaids could have evolved alongside dramatized scenes of the species explained to be aquatic apes survival well the story does seem like it could be presented in good fun the sketchy part comes from the fact that it tries to deceive the audience with fake recordings and historical evidence which is totally designed to look real and designed to undermine skepticism to the hoax they were trying to create this was a hoax people believed it oh no it's megalodon the mermaid it sacrifices itself nobly to the great shark just as discovery would sacrifice its credibility to it the very next year it needs to be fed it still doesn't taste like shark in the same style as the mermaid special megalodon the monster shark lives is an hour and a half show in which discovery channel lies to you for an hour and a half although there is a disclaimer at the beginning it's vague and what they don't tell you is literally everything in this story is made up alright so colin drake is a shark researcher who's played by an actor investigating the sinking of a small fishing boat off the coast of south africa in shark alley a real location where many large predatory sharks congregate the hunt seals no well drake is initially searching for the legendary monster shark known locally as submarine which is said to grow over 30 feet long the fact that the sunken boat was bit in half there was no way a whale did this leads him to believe that it was none other than megalodon who has returned to bite a boat in half renowned marine biologist colin drake and his team of ocean specialists have launched a global investigation into the incident but is drake's theory correct is the deadly predator they're looking for megalodon drake's team is skeptical of his explanation after all it's widely believed megalodon went extinct two to three million years ago but his team supports him anyways i'm still definitely thinking great white hair i'm thinking it's megalodon so they set up some elaborate camera and sonar setups to attempt to lure the shark out of the waters a process which discovery channel crews apparently has exclusive access to over a one month period in april of 2013 discovery channel cameras had exclusive access to colin drake and his team yeah if i made up some sh i'd have exclusive access to it too all right for all you baby brains that were complaining i was only drinking white claw here i'm drinking a beer are you happy it has marginally more alcohol than the white cloth i hope your baby brain is satiated today megalodon is not only a prehistoric shark it's a cryptid i gave a bad definition for cryptozoology last time around so let's improve it cryptozoology is the study of animals that currently do not have widely accepted hard proof to exist many of these creatures and pretty much all of the popular ones are believed by the wider scientific community to not exist at all megalodon existed and based on what vertebrae and teeth samples that have been found scientists have a pretty good idea of what megalodon ate a lot of whales the remains of its teeth and its prey and its teeth in its prey give us a pretty good idea of how big megalodon may have gotten while there are many contributing points that are attributed to leading to megalodon's extinction including lowering global temperatures new land boundaries forming in megalodon's habitat and competition from more modern smaller fuel-efficient sharks the real reason scientists believe megalodon is definitely not still hiding somewhere out in all that ocean is for a few good reasons the ocean is big look at all that ocean just kidding this is a gulf but you believed it was an ocean because there's just so much ocean on the planet 70 water this planet is obviously stuff we haven't even ever thought of is down there such as mothman and his cute little submarine megalodon the monster shark lives uses ocean big as one of its primary arguments it points to recent discoveries like the mega mouth shark and too many lazarus taxon species like coelacanths and pygmy right whales in fact this whale is a species that megalodon preyed on maybe maggie don hi too where are you maggie don ultimately the next question then becomes if megalodon is just hiding deep within the ocean what did the megalodon eat and where's the evidence that it's eating it improbable maggie hung out around coastal waters so much of its teeth are found on land today that formed over waterways it swam through only a few million years ago it's not that there aren't magnificent and even big creatures waiting to be discovered in the earth's oceans it's that the claim that one of those creatures is a 40 to 60 foot long predatory fish that feeds on some of the largest organisms that ever lived on this planet and has been doing so undetected is a pretty big leap in logic to make but who knows what kind of leaps air jaws megalodon could do holy however what sets this special apart from something like monster quest which also did a megalodon episode is the fact that discovery channel fabricated the stories the evidence and the events of their expedition for the ultimate goal of creating a hoax for the sake of high ratings and it worked oh my god it's flat at this point discovery had done their experiment with their mermaids documentary it did numbers and the follow-up special to the mermaid dock that aired right before shark week 2013 did even bigger numbers they knew exactly what kind of reaction this was going to get but they also knew it was going to be a rating smash hit if i could make money by making people mad i would no i wouldn't i hate it when people are mad at me so colin wants to prove megalodon exists but his pal doesn't believe megalodon is the culprit they go through poorly photoshopped photos which ultimately reveals a career killing photo of megalodon with his good friends the nazis holy it's just like that episode of the twilight zone where hitler has a giant shark they just assassinate this shark's character that first hunted our oceans around 17 million years ago eating anything and everything in its path with extreme prejudice shouldn't it say without prejudice why are they trying to portray megalodon as this hateful nazi-affiliated creature learn more about it so that we can stop it before another attack happened oh no megalodon is going to murder people the serial killer of the seas we get it megalodon was a mean guy they gotta paint megalodon as a big villain to give urgency to colin in his cruise expedition they're going up against a real bad shark here the behavior of whatever creature is behind this seems to be operating completely from its own rules all right first we had no rules pterodactyl now we have her buddy no rules megalodon this guy's still partying two to three million years after he went extinct hell yeah something that really throws me off is how much they leverage discovery's reputation in this special these images were filmed by discovery channel's crew on the night of april 23 2013. i mean this is the same company that brought us animal cops detroit they mentioned in 2012 discovery did in fact capture and air the first footage of a giant squid which was big news the giant squid this isn't even the real giant squid they captured this is i don't know why they're showing you a different one the narrator keeps stating discovery has gained exclusive access for the footage of colin and his team like they want you to know this is a project of discovery all for the sake of perpetuating the hoax of big shark it's wild yet i think one of the worst offenses of this special is just how boring everything is they have interviews with people who supposedly saw megalodon but if shark week was ever going to bring out an over dramatic dramatization of a shark encounter it should be here like we get the nazi photo but why not like a flashback to the interaction with actors uh like you know the fake boat attack also at the beginning we only get a bunch of shaky camera footage and they're like it was megalodon that boat was shaking footage were shown of the cgi shark is deliberately obscured this underwater footage the shark is computer animated but we never see it for too long and sometimes we don't see it at all unless it's one of those photoshopped pictures a shark big enough to take down a whale we're talking about a giant shark cause there's been a 50-ton monster in these waters for over 70 years that thing is enormous the mermaid documentary i hated it so much but i loved it this is just so boring even when they're in the water all the real sharks are also animated this that's not what discovery's for it's like this and the whole mermaid documentary are based around a few viral clips they commissioned to perpetuate the hoax online alongside their weird chip posts posed as historical evidence surrounded by a whole lot of nothing but the mermaid dock just has a lot more going on the hoax side of it is bad but it has to do so much more legwork to convince the audience of its claim that it ends up being bold in a way like a lot of bad documentaries so much of the run time is padded by repeating the same idea over and over again to sink it in the head of the audiences because they realize there's not really much to their argument now it tastes like sharks it's really flat but it tastes like sharks finally at one point they're discussing how the surfacing of the strait of panama 2.8 million years ago would have cut off megalodon's migratory and hunting patterns restricting movement between the atlantic and the pacific ocean they go on to explain that megalodon could have adopted new hunting patterns going down the coast of south america to travel back and forth between these two large bodies of water a big piece of evidence is a whale that was bit in half and washes ashore gross this also isn't real the timeline of the fake sightings confirms this migratory hunting pattern i gathered this concept the first time they say it but then they go on to explain it over and over again for five minutes straight there's even an ad break in between it all so if you are watching this live it's just like two and a half minutes of you know the shark goes down the tip of south america and up back into the other side of the ocean uh to like a charming commercial to just them explaining that again for a 25 minutes straight it was 10 minutes straight the climax of the film sees drake's crew deploying a five mile wide chum slick to attract big shark jones they also use a decoy the size of a whale seal size decoys are often used by discovery to get sharks to breach out of the water so big shark big decoy okay i can follow this everything is big except the boat so there's big tension you'll come for a boat you'll see they send some divers in the cage including mike but no worries he doesn't believe in megalodon there's tons of sharks attracted to the tum slick but they all run away from something they lose contact with the crew in the cage including mike who's still skeptical of megalodon mike come in can you guys hear me the crew returns and mike well he believes in megalodon now they even got some more shaky footage of it is megalodon still out there well colin drake seems to be convinced and now mike is too apparently discovery channel conducted a poll which stated 71 of viewers were also convinced by the fake evidence but who knows what kind of polling methods they used when it aired i never finished watching the megalodon documentary i turned it off when i realized what they were doing and i was ridiculously disappointed with what they were doing i mean megalodon is dead i was there when it happened you can't tell me i wasn't you weren't there but i did try to watch shark week the very next night when they aired voodoo sharks holy voodoo sharks is supposedly about a mythical monster shark that lives in the louisiana bayous called the rookin this caused even more controversy for discovery although it was overshadowed by megalodon's 40 to 60 foot shadow while they interview a team of fishermen trying to locate this mythical beast they also filmed and interviewed real shark researchers doing unrelated work off the coast of louisiana who had no clue about what this documentary was about go send me some data oh that's what i call a successful night right there that's good back on the mighty mississippi the cajun team camps out for the night tell us the story uncle bluh when the final product came out the show was edited to make it seem like the researchers also believed in the rookin and that both the team of fishermen and the team of researchers were both racing to find it and to round out shark week 2013 discovery aired another masterful piece of shark sensationalism great white serial killer which tried to argue two shark attacks that occurred two years apart on the same beach was actually the job of the same shark who's a shark serial killer [Applause] well discovery was slammed in the presses and on social media for the hoax they have proudly announced shark week 2013 as the highest rated shark week year ever which was great because animal planet had its most successful program in 2013 mermaids the new evidence a sit-down style interview follow-up featuring characters from the original documentary from a year earlier i'm john frankel join me tonight as we revisit the controversy and investigate how the story has progressed over the past year we'll show you extraordinary new evidence that's come forward which is why in 2014 it was no shock when shark week decided to do it all over again with another interview style show megalodon the new evidence with the return of colin drake good evening i'm emmitt miller is it possible that a prehistoric shark measuring 70 feet long and weighing 50 tons is still roaming our oceans today the fact discovery did this twice blows my mind i glossed over the mermaid follow-up in my animal planet video just because i knew they did the exact same thing again so let's look at how both are similar now in his first public interview since mermaid's the body found i sit down with the scientists who brought this story to worldwide attention dr paul robertson welcome uh thank you i'm john frankel all right so you claim that you've found additional leads in this past year that actually say that megalodon still exists yeah i have all right i'm emmitt miller both specials see the central character return one year later to re-examine the original tv special debate critics of their claim and to show off the quote new evidence you realize of course critics are going to point out that megalodon disappeared from the fossil records two million years ago yeah but you know most of it's just more computer animated footage made to look like amateur video these are just some of the most surreal pieces of tv i've ever seen the style of it all is just so dull and boring like it feels real some more evidence coming up next is that correct i do yeah all right we'll get to that just a second first mr skelton thank you very much for sharing your story with us yeah you bet because it's too dull and boring to be fake even the footage they show you except for this one i noticed something out in the water okay kind of a speck yeah well at this resolution it's a speck when they zoomed in though they got this it's a little fuzzy but i'd say that's a shark though in a way i do prefer these to the original shows for one they're only 45 minutes compared to the hour and a half run time of the original two specials but also they just pack it in with ridiculous moments if you know it's a fake you can just sit back and appreciate the total of it all governments trying to cover up the existence of mermaids was a pretty big part of the mermaid dock so they have to slip it in the megalo dock now too the south african government rejected colin drake's findings and have now been working to suppress his voice and create their own explanation for the event i love the debates specifically because they're set up to make whoever doubts our main characters claim to be an idiot because they place the fake footage and the fake evidence over their more grounded explanation which is never the footage is fake it's all animated this is a seal they're like oh that's not a mermaid it's a seal this is a seal i trust the public will accept the findings of the marine biologists who reviewed this footage and still command the respect of their peers paul any response to that i'm john frankel i'm curious what marine biologists would actually believe that's seal the critics are also actors and they never come out and accuse the footage and photos of being fake they always just provide a more rational explanation when the most rational explanation is this is not real to begin with first off i'm emmett miller well it was our considered opinion that mr drake was not properly following the evidence and why do you say that i'm emma miller we brought in some third-party scientists to examine all the data independently the incident was perpetrated not by a shark but by a lone orca we do greatly respect mr drake as a scientist but at this point in time we are satisfied with our own conclusions i'm sitting here editing the day before this video comes out and i just want to illustrate how boring these shows are so this interview with the south african environmentalist official is four minutes long and i cut it down to about 30 seconds uh and all the important information just boiled down to 30 seconds when it was originally stretched out the four minutes in the original special yeah yeah i think he's just a politician playing politics i love the goofy charisma of the guy in the shark follow-up oh seems as though that presents you with a bit of a conundrum now doesn't it yeah huge a huge unless megalodon can swim from brazil to the middle of the indian ocean in five days i highly doubt that was the answer to my question but i would imagine you do have an answer these two appearances are two different megalodons okay that's a pretty huge claim yeah it's very huge however the mermaid follow-up spends more time debunking hoaxes that popped up in association with the mermaid's special popularity directly i i mean okay i think i can go on record and say that this one's probably fake yes so even dr paul robertson doesn't believe everything he sees no they're like we're not fooled by this hoax so this one's more real there's this one moment in the megalodon follow-up that is just so confused in its intentions that i can't help but to tell you all about it so they bring in a supposedly real paleontologist to give real explanations for why megalodon is believed to be extinct they even bring up a fossil which was incorrectly dated to be 10 000 years old and they take the time to explain why the dating technique used for the tooth leads many to reject the claim of it being only 10 000 years old but none of this matters because supposedly our friend here has a megalodon tooth that's brand spanking new so when they describe the dating technique that yielded those results as controversial instead of incorrect and then present this fake new piece of evidence the brand new tooth the conclusion the audience is led to believe is that the 10 000 year old date was correct and that any expert testimony on the subject is just worthless each documentary also creates a call to action for real world problems the mermaid documentary draws attention to u.s navy sonar testing that is harming real world marine mammals and the second talks about how megalodon could be coming out of hiding because of global warming it's implied a second shark is swimming around the ocean and we even see a baby megalodon babylondon the warning if global warming continues this giant nazi shark will make a comeback 2014 shark week also included a more grounded story about submarine the giant shark believed to live in shark alley that is only 30 feet long and another voodoo shark type story involving a monster-sized hammerhead reported to be over 70 years old and really big once again discovery repurposed interview footage with real researchers which made it seem like they believed in the preposterous story well shark weekend often sensationalized the truth for dramatic tv content the line that these programs crossed put discovery straight into the hoax category and arguably it's a reputation that they have been fighting off for a while the shark week program wasn't the only thing they were doing at this time that was sketchy in early 2015 discovery also aired a program called eat and alive where a man was going to do a stunt where he was eaten alive by a big snake but the program aired and he wasn't eaten alive by a big snake however despite the raiding success discovery made another change back to more science-backed programming in 2015. well shark week will probably never fully shed at sensationalized takes on shark attacks fully the channel has toned down on dramatized reenactments with education being brought much more into focus in fact in 2018 discovery aired a special dedicated to debunking the megalodon hoax they created with real shark and megalodon researchers at the focus oh there are known megalodon sometimes shark week airs really high quality programming and other times it's sensationalized garbage or innocent fun like when they bring on michael phelps to race a shark or mike tyson to fight a shark apparently [Music] mike tyson you cheated you had a professional shark wrangler helping you that'd be like if i beat somebody at boxing with the help of mike tyson but also since 2013 they have made three sequels to great white serial killer quite honestly i think if there's anything to be taken away here it's that discovery communication is in fact a corporation who will make content that appeals to a wide variety of people sometimes they're gonna portray sharks as violent killers and other times they're actually going to sit down and try to educate their audience hey whatever gets people to watch more sharks shark week 2021 is only a few weeks away and i hope this year they're able to find a way to create entertaining and engaging content without sacrificing educational value and while keeping up the shark's good name these guys they're all right hello discovery channel inc currently you and warner brother media are trying to merge and in the midst of all that corporate restructuring i think it would be the perfect opportunity to have a messy and confusing choice for the next host of shark week that's right i'm announcing my candidacy to host shark week whenever discovery channel will have me as a d-list youtuber i don't command an expensive price but your audience doesn't have to know that for all they know i'm the coolest guy on the internet so if you're interested so if you're interested in a new era of shark weed i have the energy discovery channel needs or at least i'll have the energy when discovery channel needs me to have it i promise until then i'm tired i'm stressed i'm gonna go get some sleep

Channel: Billiam

Views: 557,386

Rating: 4.9284301 out of 5

Keywords: commentary, nostalgia, Billiam, Shark Week, Discovery Channel, Megalodon, Animal Planet, Jaws, Great White Shark

Id: FpqDzokGGpQ

Length: 35min 26sec (2126 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 26 2021