Last night NBC aired the series finale of its sitcom “The Office.” The show, which follows the wacky and touching goings-on at the Dunder-Mifflin Paper Company in Scranton, Pennsylvania, was never as big a hit as comedies like “The Big Bang Theory” or “Two and a Half Men,” but found a loyal audience large enough to sustain it for nine seasons.

Leading up to the finale, NBC aired a retrospective of the series, featuring interviews with the cast and crew, and video footage from a trip they made to Scranton celebrate the show. An astute reader noticed that the retrospective was actually produced by NBC News, although it didn’t feature any notable news talent.

As strange as it may seem, NBC’s news division–not unlike ABC and CBS–will occasionally be commissioned for specials that are more entertainment than information. Peacock Productions, a production house within NBC News, is producing daredevil Nik Wallenda‘s walk across the Grand Canyon next month on Discovery Channel, just as ABC News produced his walk across Niagara Falls. Still, having the news division produce a retrospective on a show that could easily have been produced by the show’s own staff is sure to raise some eyebrows.

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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• Chris Cramer has joined Dow Jones as head of video operations. The one-time chief of newsgathering at the BBC and, later, head of CNN International, Cramer will oversee an expanded video team at the News Corp. publisher. He’ll report to Dow Jones EIC Gerry Baker.

• Steve Coll has been named Dean of the Columbia Journalism school. An occasional cable news guest, Coll is an author, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and former Washington Post reporter. He’s been president of The New America Foundation for the last 5 years.

• CNN’s Zain Verjee is one 15 students to be accepted into a creative writing program at Oxford University. Verjee will continue to anchor her morning show on CNN International as well as continuing to contribute to CNN/U.S.

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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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.

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.

With the excitement over “Good Morning America’s” ratings and Nik Wallenda‘s wire-walk over Niagara Falls, recognition of some of ABC’s recent big gets seems to have fallen by the wayside.

Three of those gets, were all gotten by “20/20″ anchor Chris Cuomo and his team: Cuomo’s interview with Rielle Hunter airs Friday night; the pre-sentence interview with Rutger’s student Dharun Ravi in March; and the October sitdown with Stephanie Madoff Mack, former daughter-in-law of Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff.

“We worked hard at securing three of the biggest bookings so far this year,” Cuomo tells TVNewser, “despite all the money being offered by others, which is of course forbidden at ABC News.”

Last July, ABC News stopped paying licensing fees in order to score big interviews. The revelation that the network paid  $200,000 to the family of Casey Anthony, was the beginning of the end of the practice at ABC.

“It’s rewarding to know that ABC’s reputation for tough but fair interviews and our unrivaled distribution on multiple platforms are still the most powerful incentives to sit down with us,” says Cuomo.

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.