Discovery Channel has secured the live TV rights for daredevil Nik Wallenda‘s latest stunt: walking across the Grand Canyon on a tightrope. Wallenda announced the stunt on NBC’s “Today” this morning. It was probably not a coincidence, as NBC News’ Peacock Productions will produce live coverage of the tightrope walk for Discovery Channel.

According to Brian Stelter in the Times, ABC was the other bidder for Wallenda’s latest stunt, but Discovery simply offered the better deal. A source close to the program tells TVNewser that Discovery’s offer was “dramatically better” than ABC’s, which included the stipulation that Wallenda wear a safety harness. Discovery is not requiring that Wallenda wear a harness.

The market for live stunt programming continues to be strong. Discovery scored big with live coverage of Felix Baumgartner‘s space jump last October. ABC aired Wallenda’s last stunt in June 2012, when he walked across Niagara Falls. ABC News produced the coverage, which drew the best Friday night ratings in years for the network.

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NBC’s “Today” had two “exclusive interviews” this morning, although both people had already been interviewed on CBS News.

Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner was interviewed by Savannah Guthrie this morning, touted as a “Today” exclusive. The only problem is that he gave an interview to “CBS This Morning” last Friday. TVNewser hears that he was also supposed to appear on “Good Morning America” this morning, but it was scrubbed after his CBS appearance.

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• HBO is debuting a four part documentary series about war zone photojournalists in November. The series, “Witness,” airs Monday nights at 9 PM starting Nov. 5. Each special takes viewers to a different part of the world, and chronicles the challenges of photojournalists there. The locations are Juarez, Libya, South Sudan and Rio.

• Fox Business anchor Lou Dobbs talks to Boston.com about, among other things, CNN: “For those of us who were part of building it, it’s very disappointing what has happened to them.”

• Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner gave his first one on one TV interview since jumping from space to “CBS This Morning.” You can watch it after the jump.

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4.2 million people watched daredevil Felix Baumgartner jump from space on Discovery Channel Sunday afternoon according to data from Nielsen, with an astonishing eight million people watching the jump live on YouTube (shattering a record for the site).

All told 12.65 million people watched the jump live at the same time starting around 1:30 Sunday afternoon. For comparison, that is almost twice as many people than any of the MLB playoff games on TBS.

Discovery Channel and sister network Velocity had exclusive live TV rights, though other channels, such as CNN, played video from the jump leading up to and immediately after the jump. “We are not showing live pictures right now for a reason, we will show live pictures when he is on the ground, and walks away,” CNN’s Chad Myers said, somewhat cryptically.

The jump may be a contrived media event, but viewers have shown that they love to watch these stunts. In June, 13 million people watched daredevil Nik Wallenda walk on a wire across Niagara Falls on ABC.

During MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” this afternoon, there quite the typo in one of the on-screen graphics. See if you can spot it (via @BenDimiero):

Yeah, Einstein’s theories still hold up, despite the efforts of Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner. We will have more on coverage of Baumgartner’s jump when the ratings come in.