Discovery Press Web United States

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(May 1, 2012, Silver Spring, Md.) - Animal Planet has been on a high for six straight months across multiple key demos, and this April, the network seized its strongest April Prime ever with double-digit growth among all major demos including 691K P2+ viewers (+17%), 523K HH (+20%), 311K P25-54 (+20%) and 179K M25-54 (+32%) and reached its healthiest Prime delivery in nine years among W18-49 (129K). Animal Planet posted its best-ever monthly performance in network history among M25-54 in both Prime and Total Day. The network also saw its best-ever April Total Day delivery among P2 + (450K) and P18-49 (192K).

This April, Animal Planet's success was spurred by key-performing series, including RIVER MONSTERS, WHALE WARS: VIKING SHORES and TANKED. RIVER MONSTERS remains the network's top-performing series ever among all key demos. With more than 1.77 million P2+ viewers having watched the two-hour season four premiere, the series claimed its most-watched season debut ever. The fourth season has delivered 1.6M P2+ viewers thus far and is on track to post its best season ever across all major demos. The series helped place Animal Planet among the top five ad-supported cable networks in the Sunday 10 PM time slot based on delivery among M25-54 and M18-49.

The series debut of WHALE WARS: VIKING SHORES delivered nearly 1.1M P2+ viewers. The premiere brought in 427K M25-54 viewers, helping the network rank number one in the Friday 9 PM time slot among all ad-supported cable, excluding sports programming.

Sophomore series TANKED continues to perform well, delivering nearly 1M P2+ viewers in its second season to date with an increase of 27 percent over last season.

About RIVER MONSTERS: For three successful seasons of Animal Planet's RIVER MONSTERS, extreme angler Jeremy Wade has taken viewers along as he unravels freshwater fish tales of giant killers, where sometimes fact really is stranger than fiction! Animal Planet's best-performing series in network history returns for a fourth season, following Wade on a worldwide search for harrowing stories of bloodthirsty fish. A fearless explorer, he aims to hook the finned culprits that are thought to attack humans and reveal how much truth lies in the legends.

About WHALE WARS: VIKING SHORES: This series documents "Operation Ferocious Islands," Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's whale defense campaign as they set sail to end this ancient tradition known as "The Grind" - Faroese for "whale drive" - that takes place every summer. With more than 20 killing beaches spread across 18 islands, stopping this hunt won't be easy. For the first time in the history of the WHALE WARS saga, the Sea Shepherds are not only at sea but also deploying a covert team to patrol the streets, interact with locals and carry out undercover missions. A hunt can happen at any moment, and the Sea Shepherds are vastly outnumbered in a new kind of face-to-face battle.

About TANKED: TANKED returns with all-new episodes that dunk viewers into the rowdy, family-owned business of Acrylic Tank Manufacturing (ATM), one of the country's leading and most successful builders of aquariums. ATM is led by brothers-in-law, business partners, best friends and rivals, Wayde King and Brett Raymer, and is housed in a state-of-the-art, cavernous facility located in the center of Sin City. ATM literally has created thousands of enormous, jaw-dropping aquarium builds and conceptual tanks for ordinary joes and high-profile clients alike. This season, the guys must wade into the deep end to come up with creative solutions for some of the most outrageous and challenging builds they've ever tackled from a mobile school bus tank to a functional pinball machine tank and everything in between.

Animal Planet Media (APM), a multi-media business unit of Discovery Communications, is the world's only entertainment brand that immerses viewers in the full range of life in the animal kingdom with rich, deep content via multiple platforms and offers animal lovers and pet owners access to a centralized online, television and mobile community for immersive, engaging, high-quality entertainment, information and enrichment.  APM consists of the Animal Planet television network, available in more than 96 million homes in the US; online assets www.animalplanet.com, the ultimate online destination for all things animal; the 24/7 broadband channel, Animal Planet Beyond; Petfinder.com, the #1 pet-related Web property globally that facilitates pet adoption; and other media platforms including a robust Video-on-Demand (VOD) service; mobile content; and merchandising extensions.