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Nik Wallenda: Beyond Niagara

television series

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ7034671 ↗
Source-derived summary

Nik Wallenda: Beyond Niagara (earlier titled Danger by Design) is an American documentary/reality television program that aired on the Science Channel. The hour-long show followed daredevil and highwire artist Nik Wallenda and his family as they traveled the country performing dangerous feats. It focused on the science and engineering that go into Wallenda's acts, as he pushes "the limits of science further than ever before." According to Science Channel's general manager Debbie Adler Myers, the program gave "viewers some insight into the passion, skills, ingenuity and science behind the thrills, that has driven the Wallendas to world-renowned fame."

Beyond Niagara officially premiered on June 18, 2012 under the title Danger By Design. However, the show's pilot episode had previously aired in 2010 under the title Life on a Wire, before Discovery decided to hold the show until after Nik Wallenda's highly publicized wire walk over Niagara Falls on June 15, 2012. After the first two episodes aired, Discovery renamed the show Nik Wallenda: Beyond Niagara. The next week, on July 2, it was put "on hold" and pulled from the schedule. On the decision to cancel the show, Wallenda commented: "There was really no marketing done on it, and it went through three name changes, so it's really not that surprising." He did, however, say the show had gained some traction overseas, so there was a possibility it could have a second life abroad. The Science Channel declined to comment on their decision. On July 8, the show premiered in India under the Danger by Design title. On July 11, it premiered in Malaysia, also under the Danger title.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Nik Wallenda: Beyond Niagara” is television series. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Wallenda, Beyond and Niagara, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2012, 2010—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Wallenda, Beyond and Niagara is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “television series” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7034671. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2012 and 2010.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Nik Wallenda: Beyond Niagara”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Nik Wallenda: Beyond Niagara primary sources, Nik Wallenda: Beyond Niagara archive and Wallenda research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Nik Wallenda: Beyond Niagara”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Nik Wallenda: Beyond Niagara” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.