Fans Side With Sharks Over Stars During Shark Week

Discovery Channel just wrapped up its annual Shark Week extravaganza, so we partnered with emotion measurement AI company Canvs to check out viewer reaction and the biggest emotional drivers of conversation. From July 22-29, there were over 47,800 Emotional Reactions (ERs) during Shark Week — an enormous increase over the ERs generated the previous week for the network (under 1,000); it’s clear that Shark Week remains a huge draw for viewers, even during the summer months when people are distracted from TV. The Shaq Does Shark Week episode was the biggest driver of conversation, with over 6,400 ERs, followed by Monster Mako: Sharkopedia Edition (6,283 ERs) and Bear vs. Shark (4,148 ERs). Love has reigned supreme as the most-shared emotion throughout the episodes.Emotional Reaction breakdown for Shaq Does Shark WeekEmotional Reaction breakdown for Monster Mako: Sharkopedia EditionEmotional Reaction breakdown for Bear Vs SharkVarious Shark Week programming featured celebrities, including Shaq, Rob Riggle, Ronda Rousey, Aaron Rodgers, Lindsey Vonn and Rob Gronkowski, but it would seem that people are mostly watching for the sharks:

• During Shaq Does Shark Week, the term “sharks” appeared in 39.5% of ERs — more than the 20.1% containing “Shaq.”
• Ronda Rousey Uncaged saw something similar, with “sharks” being mentioned in 35.2% of ERs while Rousey only showed up in 4.8%.
• And for the episode that you’d think would elicit the most celebrity-related tweets, Monster Tag with Rodgers, Vonn and Gronkowski, both “sharks” (30.1%) and “shark week” (26.3%) beat out mentions of “Gronk” (5.2%), who was the most-mentioned star during the episode.

That being said, naturally there was a healthy dose of conversation around the celebs themselves.https://twitter.com/EstelaMedinaO/status/1021208085216366592https://twitter.com/JeffThomas03/status/1021212773101993984https://twitter.com/swardsie/status/1021221242152669184https://twitter.com/marissaben8/status/1021548122097573892