Discovery Channel

T he news that "The Oprah Winfrey Show" is going to end after 25 years so that its host can devote herself to a new cable channel set off reverberations in TV and financial circles late last week. But nowhere was the effect felt more keenly than in Silver Spring, where the Maryland-based Discovery Communications was vaulted into a new realm of prominence and prestige as the future home of The Oprah Winfrey Network. Discovery, a cable channel once known for showing inexpensive documentaries, has found itself the talk of both Wall Street and Madison Avenue, as everyone from financial analysts to managers of network affiliates and -owned stations that depend on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to provide an essential lead-in to their early evening newscasts wondered how the move would affect them.

Nick Caloyianis has cheated death by shark at least twice in his career as an award-winning underwater videographer. Somewhere in his basement are the jaws of a bull shark that almost tore off his foot in 1993. And sitting in his neatly manicured backyard is a shark cage that was battered off the Cape Cod coast last summer by the largest great white shark ever captured on film in New England. Caloyianis, on assignment for Discovery Channel's Shark Week, was holding the camera.

"Normandy: the Great Crusade," a television documentary by the Maryland-based cable network the Discovery Channel, was among 31 winners of the prestigious 1994 Peabody Awards announced yesterday.Judged and selected by the University of Georgia's Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications, the coveted Peabodys are awarded annually for excellence in radio or television.The award was the second in a row for the Discovery Network, which has headquarters in Bethesda.Last year, it and sister network the Learning Channel were cited jointly for general achievement.

As host of the Discovery Channel show "Dirty Jobs," Mike Rowe has taken work as a sewer inspector, pig farmer, mud bath mixer, maggot farmer, olive oil presser, and pigeon poop cleaner-upper. But all that's easy money compared to what could be his biggest challenge yet — convincing America that blue-collar work, especially the kind that may turn a stomach or break a back, is noble and necessary. The TV personality and Baltimore native has extended his "dirty boy" brand into a website, MikeRoweWorks.

What most people know of the "Elephant Man," Joseph Merrick, is derived from David Lynch's austere and haunting movie of his life starring John Hurt.Now Hurt narrates "The True Story of the Elephant Man" (9 p.m.-10 p.m., Discovery Channel), a documentary about the Victorian-era victim of a disease that made his deformities a sideshow attraction before he was rescued by surgeon Frederick Treves.The documentary will feature rare photos of Merrick and derives some of its information from Merrick's previously unreleased medical records and skeletal remains.

ODDS 'N' ENDS OFF THE BROADCAST BEAMS:* Credit the Maryland-based Discovery Channel of basic cable service for scoring a journalistic coup this weekend: At 8 p.m. on Sunday, the two-hour "Carter Center Briefing: Crisis in the Gulf" will feature former President Jimmy Carter's perspectives on the current crisis in the Persian Gulf.Despite his one-term administration's perceived problems, especially the lengthy holding of hostages in the U.S. Embassy in Iran, Carter's repute as a voice of authority and influence in international affairs has never been higher (save, perhaps, for the months after he engineered the Camp David summit between Israel's Menachem Begin and Egypt's Anwar Sadat)

The Discovery Channel, a Bethesda-based cable network company, has agreed to buy the Learning Channel for an undisclosed amount, the two companies said yesterday.The purchase would combine two of the largest educational cable television networks in the country, bringing together such diverse programming as "The Incredibly Strange Film Show" and "Quarks: A Christmas Lecture" under a single owner."As the Discovery Channel enlightens viewers, the Learning Channel has the potential to empower viewers to better their lives," John Hendricks, chairman and chief executive of Discovery, said in a statement.

Stunning photography and some people with unusual ways of spending their time highlight the Discovery Channel's look at "The Andes" (8 p.m.-11 p.m., repeats midnight-3 a.m.).Narrated by Christopher Plummer, the series takes great delight in profiling one of the most ecologically diverse regions of the planet. Its usual tack is to take one aspect of the 4,700-mile-long South American mountain chain, usually an animal or a geographic feature (sometimes both, since the latter tends to attract the former)

AUTHENTIC-LOOKING Treasure Island maps decorated the corporate offices of the Discovery Channel last spring and summer, courtesy of students at Pointers Run Elementary School.First-graders made the maps from manila paper torn at the edges, drawn on, colored and coated with wax. Art teacher Lisa Robbins used the art fun to teach map skills and art to the young students.TC Fourth-graders drew pictures of animals with fangs last spring and studied similar pictures by children's book author and artist Maurice Sendak.

The owners of the Discovery Channel yesterday made a big break into the retailing business, buying the 117 stores of the Nature Co. in a plan to promote the cable channel through the stores and promote the stores on television.Discovery Communications Inc. of Bethesda agreed to spend $40 million to buy the retail chain from CML Group Inc. of Acton, Mass. CML sold the Nature Co. to concentrate on its more profitable NordicTrack exercise equipment and its Smith & Hawken gardening supply catalog.

When Maryland-based Discovery Communications and Oprah Winfrey announced a partnership in 2009 to launch Winfrey's OWN cable channel, it immediately vaulted the Silver Spring media operation into a new league. Oprah's move to Discovery was the talk of the entertainment industry, and within hours of the announcement, J.P. Morgan was circulating a financial analysis titled "Much Ado About Oprah. " "Discovery appears to be the winner in this announcement," the Morgan analysis said.

Police shot and killed a gunman wearing what appeared to be explosives after he took three people hostage at the Discovery Channel's headquarters Wednesday afternoon, officials said. A spokesman for the company said it planned to reopen Thursday , though the building remained a crime scene Wednesday evening as authorities searched for explosives that might have been left by the gunman. Authorities identified the gunman as James J. Lee. Lee, 43, who was upset with the channel over its programming and had a history of protesting the company, entered the building at Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road about 1 p.m., wielding a gun and wearing silver canisters later described as "explosive devices," and "told everyone to stop moving," according to police.

Stories of life and death told against a background of hospital gowns, fluorescent lights and the worried words of loved ones hoping for the best are nothing new to many Baltimore viewers. Hundreds of thousands tuned in when ABC News took viewers inside Johns Hopkins Hospital on its 2000 documentary series, "Hopkins 24/7," as well as a sequel in 2007. But Baltimore's Mercy Medical Center is the focus this week in a new docu-series, "NICU," premiering at 10 p.m. Thursday July 15 on the Discovery Health cable channel.

The news that "The Oprah Winfrey Show" is going to end after 25 years so that its host can devote herself to a new cable channel set off reverberations in TV and financial circles late last week. But nowhere was the effect felt more keenly than in Silver Spring, where the Maryland-based Discovery Communications was vaulted into a new realm of prominence and prestige as the future home of The Oprah Winfrey Network. Discovery, a cable channel once known for showing inexpensive documentaries, has found itself the talk of both Wall Street and Madison Avenue, as everyone from financial analysts to managers of network affiliates and -owned stations that depend on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to provide an essential lead-in to their early evening newscasts wondered how the move would affect them.

T he news that "The Oprah Winfrey Show" is going to end after 25 years so that its host can devote herself to a new cable channel set off reverberations in TV and financial circles late last week. But nowhere was the effect felt more keenly than in Silver Spring, where the Maryland-based Discovery Communications was vaulted into a new realm of prominence and prestige as the future home of The Oprah Winfrey Network. Discovery, a cable channel once known for showing inexpensive documentaries, has found itself the talk of both Wall Street and Madison Avenue, as everyone from financial analysts to managers of network affiliates and -owned stations that depend on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to provide an essential lead-in to their early evening newscasts wondered how the move would affect them.

INSIDE TODAY WHAT THEY'RE SAYING TODAY'S SUN COLUMNISTS Stop babying criminals Young people who commit adult crimes, such as the vicious beating of Zach Sowers, should be tried as adults. Maryland baltimoresun.com/kane Stores mix giving, spending Now stores and businesses are getting into the act, setting up their signs and donation boxes for charities, and the message is: give, give, give -- as you spend, spend, spend. Today baltimoresun.com/cowherd OTHER VOICES Rob Kasper on flipping a frittata -- Taste Jay Hancock on the fall of Wendys -- Business Laura Vozzella on Robert Banks -- Maryland 5 THINGS TO DO TODAY Tim Reynolds -- Guitarist Tim Reynolds, a frequent collaborator with Dave Matthews, performs a solo acoustic show at 8 at Rams Head Tavern, 33 West St., Annapolis.

The Hard Rock Cafe has its neon guitar.Planet Hollywood has its palm trees and zebra-striped awnings.ESPN Zone will soon have a giant "sports kebab" -- a collection of sports balls on a skewer.So how can a new retailer make a splash in the Inner Harbor?Representatives of the Discovery Channel showed one approach yesterday when they asked Baltimore's Architectural Review Board for permission to create a waterfall outside the store they plan to open at Harborplace."We're looking at something very sculptural, very architectural, that begins to play up the significance of the harbor," said designer Steven McGowan of FRCH Design in Cincinnati.

NEW YORK -- In the last three years, Josh Bernstein rode horses across the Mongolian steppe with nomads, traveled deep into the Amazon to seek out a remote tribe and slept in an igloo on an Austrian glacier to test the conditions faced by Neolithic cavemen. Now he's venturing into another new territory: the Silver Spring-based Discovery Channel, a television network in the midst of its own evolution. Last week, the cable channel plucked Bernstein away from rival network the History Channel, where he has drawn a following as the host of the popular Digging for the Truth series.