Shark Week: How Discovery chooses titles like 'Air Jaws: Fin of Fury'

As Shark Week begins Sunday, Aug. 10, so does viewers’ amazement at the titles of Discovery’s new specials. “We have brainstorm meetings for titles on every show, and I’m telling you, when a brainstorm meeting on the next car show comes up, you go to a conference room and there’s like four people in it,” Michael Sorensen, VP of development and production for the channel, says. “Anytime we have a Shark Week brainstorm for titles, you have to get more seats. It’s packed, people throwing out mash-ups: One of my favorites that came out of one of these meetings was Sharkcano. I’m like, ‘I don’t even know what that is, but if we ever find sharks feeding around underwater volcanos, I’m sure there’s a show there.'”

A good title does often come first, he admits. “This might be a bit of a spoiler for next year, but Donna [Alessandro, VP of programming] came in, and she’s like, ‘I know one: The Bride of Jaws.’ I was like, ‘What is that show?’ She’s like, ‘I don’t know. That’s for you to figure out.’ So it took us like three or four months thinking, ‘Is The Bride of Jaws a love story? Is it about how great whites are mating? Is it the journey to bring two sharks together?’ And then finally, we met with this incredible science team in Australia who’s been working with this shark called Joan of Shark, which was a pretty big news story a couple months ago. She’s the biggest female great white they’ve ever seen. We’re like, ‘That could be it! That could be the focus here,'” he says. “Now it’s a show with a fantastic title, and I think it’s gonna have some incredible science.”
Here, Sorensen shares the stories behind some of 2014’s most noteworthy specials, including Air Jaws: Fin of Fury, Lair of the Mega Shark, and Zombie Sharks.