Bear Grylls off Discovery. But not Finished with the Adventure.

I’m a huge fan of Bear Grylls. I find him very inspiring and a great role model.
I’ve always enjoyed his shows; Ultimate Survival/Born Survivor/Man vs Wild (I recently got the box set of his dvd series, so every week there is a ‘Bear Night’ at our house).

His show is broadcast in about 200 countries around the world. A few months ago I also received his autobiography (see Bear Grylls Autobiography: Mud, Sweat and Tears review) as a gift and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was great reading about the behind the scenes goings-on, and understanding how the foundation of this great adventurer was built.

In the last few days the media world has been ablaze with the news that Discovery Channel terminated his contract with them.

Discovery said “Due to a continuing contractual dispute with Bear Grylls, Discovery has terminated all current productions with him.”

Bear’s publicist, Heather Krug, gave the following statement on his behalf “Bear’s goal has always been to make life-empowering shows for his many fans around the globe, and he has taken great risks to bring Discovery such award-winning programming over seven seasons. Unfortunately, Bear and Discovery have not been able to come to mutual agreement on new programming, and he disagrees with Discovery’s decision to terminate current productions. Bear has loved the Man vs Wild journey and looks forward to producing further cutting edge content again soon for his loyal audience.”

So it looks like he has no intention of hanging up his flint and urine-soaked t-shirt just yet. I doubt he will battle to find another network who will snap him up. There are definitely enough major companies and brands who would love to work with him.

The sixth and most recent season of Man vs Wild was broadcast on Discovery in the US in the middle of last year.

I follow Bear Grylls on twitter and it’s been great to see the huge amount of support he has received on that medium. He definitely hasn’t lost his positive attitude or good sense of humour as shown in this snapshot I took of his response on twitter:

Even though he has had to part ways with Discovery, I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of Bear in the future. And I’m positive he will continue to inspire millions of people around the word.