Nik Wallenda, the daredevil who crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope last year, will try a similar stunt at the Grand Canyon in June, he announced Monday.
The cable channel Discovery won the bidding war to televise the stunt, and will show it live — and potentially in prime time — June 23, if all goes according to plan.
Discovery was also the exclusive television home of another death-defying stunt, Felix Baumgartner’s jump from a capsule 24 miles above Earth, which took place last fall. The channel is interested in televising more live events, having had success with Baumgartner’s free-fall and with several special live editions of “Gold Rush" and “American Chopper."
Discovery apparently bested ABC News in the bidding for Wallenda’s Grand Canyon walk. ABC carried the Niagara Falls walk live last June, lifting the network to a rare first-place finish in the ratings. From 10:30 to 11 p.m., when he finished the walk, ABC averaged more than 13 million viewers — surpassing even the highest expectations of executives at the network. The walk was also a phenomenon on Twitter and Facebook, where viewers chatted about the stunt as it happened.
A spokeswoman for Discovery declined to say how much the channel had paid for the exclusive television rights to the Grand Canyon walk. To promote the news, the channel booked Wallenda on ABC’s archrival in the mornings, NBC’s “Today" show. “This is a dream of mine, as was Niagara Falls," Wallenda said Monday morning on “Today."
