Hasta La Creative!

The Olympics pose a programming dilemma for TV networks that aren’t airing the games: Do you offer up your best shows and compete for viewers, or wave the white flag and surrender?

Discovery chose the latter, moving up its annual Shark Week marathon on Discovery Channel to late June to avoid competing in the U.S. against NBC’s Olympics coverage, which starts Friday. It didn’t go well, with ratings down from the previous year, the company said Tuesday after announcing second-quarter results.

“We made a mistake,” Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav said on a conference call. “We wanted to get out of the way of the Olympics, but I think in retrospect I think that was too early. There were a lot of people still working.”

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