which enable steady footage to be captured from long range without disturbing the animals. From late April to early May 2009, BBC crews were in Hay River, Northwest Territories, Canada filming the annual breakup of the river of the same name, which flows into Great Slave Lake. Zoo-filmed material The BBC was accused of staging after it was reported that one scene of a polar bear giving birth was filmed in a Dutch (initially reported as German) animal park. The BBC defended its faking of the shots, explaining that it would have been impossible to film the event in the wild without endangering the cubs, that the commentary was careful not to mislead the audience, and that the Frozen Planet website had already explained how the scene was captured before the story appeared in the media. Broadcast Frozen Planet was broadcast on BBC One starting 26 October 2011. Each of the first six episodes comprises the main programme followed by a 10-minute featurette called Freeze Frame, which shows how some of the sequences were filmed. David Attenborough's principal role is to narrate the programmes, but he appears briefly on camera to give an introduction and a closing statement. For the seventh programme, "On Thin Ice", he serves as writer and presenter for what was billed by the BBC as a personal statement on the effects of climate change at the poles. A special programme called "Frozen Planet: The Epic Journey" featuring re-edited highlights from the series was broadcast on BBC One on 28 December 2011. In the United States, Frozen Planet premiered on the Discovery Channel on 18 March 2012 with Alec Baldwin replacing David Attenborough as narrator of the first six episodes. The "Autumn" episode from the BBC series was replaced by "The Making of Frozen Planet", a compilation of the Freeze Frame featurettes, and the title of the sixth episode was changed from "The Last Frontier" to "Life in the Freezer". The network originally decided not to broadcast Attenborough's "On Thin Ice" episode, citing "scheduling conflicts", but later reversed their decision, and "On Thin Ice" was broadcast on Earth Day, 22 April 2012. In Australia, the series was broadcast on the Nine Network beginning on 27 October 2011. In France, the series has been acquired by France Television, and aired in March–April 2013 under the name "Terres de Glace". Episodes All episode names from BBC website. Ratings include