In June, daredevil Nik Wallenda will attempt to walk across the Grand Canyon on a tightrope, live on Discovery Channel. NBC News’ Peacock Productions will be producing the jump, and so NBC “Today” co-hosts Willie Geist and Natalie Morales will be serving as the hosts of the event.

Wallenda announced the addition of Geist and Morales while walking on a tightrope above the audience at Discovery’s upfront presentation in New York yesterday (see the photo to the left). For insurance purposes, he was wearing a harness, “don’t worry though,” he said yesterday. “I won’t be wearing one when I walk across the Canyon.”

Last year ABC aired Wallenda’s walk across Niagara Falls, with “Good Morning America’”s Josh Elliott and “SportsCenter’”s Hannah Storm hosting. The event drew record ratings for ABC. ABC and Discovery were in a bidding war for the Grand Canyon stunt, with Discovery simply making the better offer. NBC, as the producer of the show, will also benefit.

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ESPN “SportsCenter” anchor (and former “Early Show” co-anchor) Hannah Storm co-anchored the Rose Parade telecast on ABC with her former ESPN colleague and current “Good Morning America” news anchor Josh Elliott. Normally that wouldn’t be a big deal, except that Storm suffered serious first degree burns across her head and Face last month, burns that took away her eyebrows and lashes, as well as half of her hair.

“ABC World News” noted Storm’s return, and explained what happened:

In addition to giving ABC its best Friday night in five years, “Megastunts: Highwire Over Niagara Falls” also scored on the other side of the Falls, in Canada.

Canadian broadcaster CTV, which simulcast the ABC News production hosted by Josh Elliott and Hannah Storm, averaged 3.9 million viewers making the 2-hour special the #1 non-sports summer special ever in Canada. The ABC logo was kept in the lower right of the screen throughout, while the CTV logo was in the upper right.

Nik Wallenda‘s high wire walk from the U.S. to Canada over Niagara Falls, was the third most-watched non-sports special in Canada this TV season, behind the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards. The special peaked at 6.8 million viewers in the last half hour. By comparison, 13.1 million U.S. viewers watched the last half hour on ABC.

In Toronto alone, the high wire act attracted an incredible 20.8 rating and a 50.4% share, meaning one out of every two people watching television in Toronto was watching the special on CTV.

ABC won the night last night with three hours of programming leading up Nik Wallenda‘s highwire walk over Niagara Falls.

ABC’s “Megastunts: Highwire Over Niagara Falls,” a production of ABC News and hosted by Josh Elliott and Hannah Storm with contributions from Bill Weir and Sam Champion, was the most-watched non-sports summertime (Memorial Day to Labor Day) telecast since 2006 and gave ABC its best Friday night since November, 2007.

From 9-11pm, ABC averaged 10.1M total viewers and drew a 2.5 rating / 9 share in the A25-54 demo.

The show pulled in 13.1M viewers in the last half hour. Wallenda’s walk began around 10:15pm and concluded at 10:42pm. The 10:30 half hour drew a 3.4/11 in A18-49 and a 4.3/12 in A25-54.

For the three hours of primetime, which, on ABC, were all devoted to the wire walk, the network topped second place CBS by +89% in viewers (8.7M vs. 4.6M), and more than doubled NBC in the younger demos: A18-49 (+110% – 2.1/8 vs. 1.0/4) and A25-54 (+117% – 2.6/8 vs. 1.2/4).

Last night’s wire walk hearkened back to an earlier TV time when death-defying stunts were more common, and networks more scarce. In October, 1975, when most viewers had just three TV channels to choose from, ABC’s Wide World of Sports broadcast Evel Knievel‘s motorcycle jump over 14 Greyhound buses at King’s Island amusement park in Ohio. That stunt drew a 22.3 rating and 52 share, meaning more than half of the available TV audience watched.

Well, he made it across. And Nik Wallenda made it look pretty easy, too.

In fact, after a two-hour pre-show followed by a 28-minute walk across Niagara Falls, 33-year-old Wallenda said the hardest part was explaining to his young family, including his three kids, that this is what the Wallendas do.

“I think that’s the hardest part of it, especially for my son,” said Wallenda to hosts Josh Elliott and Hannah Storm after the walk, part of three hours of programming on ABC tonight.

“It is dangerous, but the more you feed that stuff into your mind, the scarier it gets. With me, listening to media stories and building all that up and the strong winds and stuff. I know I can withstand strong winds, but if the media keeps playing up how dangerous and the death, in my head, it becomes debilitating to me. So I have to monitor how much of that I take into my own mind.

So as you can imagine, for my son, an 11-year-old, it’s hard for him to manage that, thinking, ‘I could lose my dad right now.’”

He didn’t. Wallenda is safe, in Canada tonight and already planning his next big stunt, across the Grand Canyon.

Tonight live on ABC daredevil Nik Wallenda will attempt to walk across Niagara Falls on a tightrope. Not surprisingly, ABC’s “Good Morning America” spent a significant amount of time covering the stunt on this morning’s program, with Josh Elliott and Sam Champion reporting live from the Falls.

But ABC was hardly alone in reporting on the stunt. Fox News, The Weather Channel, MSNBC, Fox Business Network and CNN all ran segments this morning talking about Wallenda’s attempt. On ABC sister network ESPN, Elliot reunited with his old “SportsCenter” co-anchor Hannah Storm to promote the special (see below).

Many of the local affiliates for NBC and CBS (including in New York, Boston and other major markets) had segments on Wallenda’s walk this morning, even during cut-ins from “Today” and “CBS This Morning.” Those two morning shows opted to not talk about the walk, for more obvious reasons.

When CBS recently announced that Charlie Rose and Gayle King would headline its revamped ‘Early Show,’ Rene Syler got slammed with tweets asking for her reaction.

“It’s interesting that people think I’m interested,” says Syler, an ‘Early Show’ anchor from 2002 to ’06. “I’m not in that world anymore. To be honest, I don’t have much of a reaction.”

She may be the only one. Most observers predict that the unlikely combination of the cerebral Rose, who turns 70 next month,  and the chatty King, 56, will do nothing to break CBS’s unabated string of failures in a franchise that dates back to 1954, with host Walter Cronkite.

“It has no shot, in the slightest,” says network-news analyst Andrew Tyndall.

“I don’t get it…. Charlie Rose won’t play in the morning. Of all the timeslots for TV news, morning shows skew the youngest. It’s completely counter-intuitive to hire someone that old.”

When the show launches Jan. 9, the plan is for Rose to handle the 7 a.m. hour and King the 8 a.m., with holdover Erica Hill contributing to both. CBS News Chairman Jeff Fager says the new broadcast will do nothing less than “redefine the morning television landscape.”

Is that all? Heady stuff for a show in its third incarnation since last December; its eighth since ’99.

Having essentially two different programs will be too disruptive to morning viewers accustomed to a more discernible flow, according to Tyndall. “There is such a sharp break between what Rose

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When it comes to the 2011 NBA Finals, there will be no winners – - only losers – - thanks to a disturbing bet made by Charles Barkley and Dan Le Batard.

The two round and plump men agreed that if the Mavericks lose the Finals, Barkley will wear a Speedo on South Beach during a radio interview with Le Batard.

If the Heat lose, Le Batard will have to squeeze into the Speedo.

Enjoy, South Beach.

CBS is passing on the sitcom based on the life of ESPN radio and SportsNation personality Colin Cowherd, Cowherd reports on Twitter, cheating us of the chance to see Damon Wayans play “Nick Herd,” Cowherd’s fictional sitcom doppelganger.

Breaking: Changes are afoot at ABC’s “Good Morning America,” as Juju Chang will soon leave the program to join “Nightline” as a correspondent and fill-in anchor, while ESPN “SportsCenter” anchor Josh Elliott joins the morning show as its newsreader.

The changes are the first major moves since James Goldston took over as senior EP of “GMA” in February.

“In her new position, Juju will play a leading part in a number of the 13 primetime hours that Nightline will produce this summer,” wrote ABC News president Ben Sherwood in an email to staff. “She will also make major contributions to 20/20, World News and GMA – as she has throughout her 23 year career at ABC News.”

The news was first reported by the NY Post.

Elliott will join fellow ESPN alum Robin Roberts on the morning show, along with ESPN reporter Erin Andrews, who contributes regular pieces to the program. Both ESPN and ABC are owned by the Walt Disney Company.

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