We come to the end of another Shark Week — Discovery Channel’s summer-doldrums ode to blood and water. Yes, it’s more than that. It’s educational, it’s scientific, it’s a complicated love/hate affair with an aquatic species most of us will never, ever encounter.

I mean ever.

But forget about all of that. Let’s talk about something you might not know.

This year marks Shark Week’s 23rd season, making it cable’s longest-running event. And it’s garnered more than 20 million viewers every year since 1995. On cable.

Ratings-wise, Discovery Channel is the market leader of their brand — 13th most watched cable network overall, higher than CNN and MTV. And those numbers go up (7th) among 18 to 49-year-olds.

But it hasn’t always been an apex predator. Discovery Channel started out with 156,000 households in 1985. It went Challenger Brand by offering access to cable systems for free, thanks to a unique profit-sharing arrangement with its supplying producers. (In those days, it was common to charge 5-15 cents per subscriber for access.)

No one really knew if this would work. Especially since its programs were primarily nonfiction documentaries about weird stuff, like Egyptian mummies and geology.

25 years later, Discovery Channel beams to more than 100 million subscribers in the U.S. alone. And Shark Week has been flanking those pharaohs and volcanoes for nearly as long. It’s easily more ingrained than anything else in the Discovery Channel brand.

And this year, Shark Week promotion is Carcharodon carcharias big. Some of it is fun, like Shark Yourself, and some of it is just plain creepy, like Frenzied Waters — a Facebook-connected application that generates your own personalized tale of shark-induced woe.

One also wonders if Captain Morgan wasn’t simply biding its time until August to go full bore on its new rum product, Lime Bite. Discovery Channel’s website has a tab inconspicuously labeled “Recipes,” all of which are drinks with Lime Bite as the first ingredient. Fosters is even making some loose ties between Australian beer and sharks.

As with any established event, there are detractors. They say Shark Week only promotes fear and gore. And mediocrity. Slate ran an article a bit ago, “Not-So-Great White: Has Shark Week finally jumped the shark?”

And that was in 2004.

Here’s the thing: I’m not even that into Shark Week. (And it’s not because sharks are my #1 irrational death fear.) It’s that only one hour in 20 feels like something I haven’t already seen. But then I probably watch more nature TV than the average bear.

What I do like is the idea of it, the way the advertising ramps up, the way people I’d never look to for interesting information go exclamatory about it on Facebook. The way that — for at least one week every summer — sheer wonder becomes pop culture.

And Shark Week is a weeklong chest-beat of that larger brand. So long as Discovery Channel keeps reminding us that they’re trafficking in awe, the only shark-jumping that matters is “Ultimate Air Jaws.”

Boom de yada, boom de yada.