White replacement at Discovery? Dawkins blasts network as David Attenborough fired, Oprah takes his place

White replacement at BBC?

“I marvel at the beauty and wonder of nature and am in perpetual awe of the miracle of life in all forms…” — Oprah Winfrey

The Life series narrated by David Attenborough is regarded as the most successful BBC documentary ever produced. It was responsible for record profits for the government-owned network in 2009/10.

Wikipedia describes the 2009 series as:

[taking] a global view of the specialised strategies and extreme behaviour that living things have developed in order to survive; what Charles Darwin termed “the struggle for existence”

Broadcast rights were later sold to the American-based Discovery Channel.  But Discovery ditched Attenborough for wildly popular Oprah Winfrey.

Oprah’s sudden love for Wildlife

In 2017 on her personal blog, Oprah wrote the following:

I started doing voice tracks several months ago for Life, the new Discovery series premiering in March 2010. Featuring the mating rituals of the humpback whale, the dramatic rescue of a baby elephant by her grandmother, and an eye-popping array of birds, insects, and reptiles from all over the world—some of them captured for the first time, all on state-of-the-art HD film—Life lives up to its name. It’s an all-encompassing, glorious, and sometimes terrifying exposé of how we all cohabit, thrive, and survive here on our beautiful planet.

Oprah voice track instead of legendary David Attenborough

On May 11, the Century for Inquiry in the UK hosted an awards event to present comedian and self-professed atheist activist Ricky Gervais with the annual Richard Dawkins award.

The Richard Dawkins Award has been presented annually since 2003. Past winners have included philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett, activist and feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and actor and writer Stephen Fry.

The event was moderated by best-selling author and professor of psychology, Richard Wiseman.  Both Dawkins and Gervais appeared on stage for an hour and a half discussing a wide range of topics, including Darwinian evolution.

Dawkins “shocked” by Replacement

At the 55-minute mark the conversation turned to Gervais giving the rights for syndication of his wildly successful series The Office to an American firm.  Gervais went into detail as to how he made 10 times more $$ from American syndication as he ever did with the British series.

Dawkins interrupted:

Is it true when it was sold to America, they got a different cast… why didn’t they just take your version?

Gervais:

The US office was getting like 10 million a week… It’s a different beast… I look at it like I sold my DNA.  But it’s not my kid…

Dawkins:

I was rather shocked to discover that one of David Attenborough’s really major series was redone with an American voice with Oprah Winfrey instead of David Attenborough.  I thought that’s utter heresy.

Audience laughs and claps.

56 minute mark, YouTube.

Attenborough sacked yet again

And now almost as to add insult to injure, it appears David Attenborough has been sacked for a second time, replaced by a non-white narrator.

Update from Yahoo News,

If you’re anything like me, you saw the announcement for Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age and jumped for joy. Then you went to its IMDB page and saw that there was absolutely no trace of David Attenborough’s involvement, and your heart sank.

Since the Apple TV CGI documentary series began in 2022, the British King of nature has been its voiceover. By season 2, Attenborough was even hosting the behind-the-scenes section of each episode on camera. Surely, this could only mean the near 100-year-old was having a health scare, as social media frequently likes to believe.

But then I looked into it further and realized this couldn’t be the case. The day before I had the chance to speak to executive producer Mike Gunton, BBC iPlayer launched brand-new nature series Kingdom, voiced by (you guessed it) Attenborough.