 In 1988, The Discovery Channel debuted an annual programming stunt called Shark Week, the week-long event eventually gained in popularity starting in the 1990s and continues to be shown each summer on the channel to this day.By 1990, the channel was available in over 50 million households.The channel began to shift its focus in the early 2000s to attract a broader audience, by incorporating more reality-based series focusing on automotive, occupations, and speculative investigation series; though the refocused programming strategy proved popular, Discovery Channel's ratings began to decline by the middle of the decade.