For Niagara Falls Walk, ABC Tells Wallenda He Must Wear Harness Nik Wallenda has always acknowledged that his planned walk over Niagara Falls on a two-inch-thick steel cable would be dangerous. But he did not anticipate that it would be deemed too dangerous for network television. Mr. Wallenda said Monday that he was preparing to wear a harness while crossing the falls - a precaution that, he said, was demanded by the ABC network, which is planning a three-hour prime time special on his walk. A seventh-generation circus performer, Mr. Wallenda had previously rejected the idea of wearing a harness, which he described as a betrayal of his family's history of untethered wire-walking. But he said he could not afford to lose his deal with ABC, which is paying for the rights to broadcast his walk, scheduled for the evening of June 15. "It's disheartening - I wanted to do it without anything," Mr. Wallenda told The Buffalo News. To me, it just personally takes away from it. "My lawyers are saying, "Look, we've pushed; we've tried," " he added. If ABC pulls, they're my biggest financial supporter in this - I can't financially do it. The Wallenda camp sought to clarify some of Mr. Wallenda's comments later Monday. His manager said Mr. Wallenda had not formally agreed to wear a harness, and was still trying to persuade ABC to allow him to cross the gorge without one. He has been practicing on a high wire strung across a casino parking lot in Niagara Falls, N.Y. In an interview last week, Mr. Wallenda said he had never before worn a harness and had never had any interest in wearing one. He noted that he was well aware of the risk involved in his profession; his great-grandfather Karl Wallenda died in 1978 in a fall from a tightrope in San Juan, P.R. Mr. Wallenda's wife, Erendira, who is also an acrobat, said she, too, opposed the idea of a tether. She summed up their occupation this way: "If we fall, we die." ABC is planning to broadcast the walk with a brief delay, to give producers time to adjust in case something goes wrong. The network has not discussed details of its negotiations with Mr. Wallenda, although on Monday, it did not dispute his assertion that the network had pressed him to wear a harness. "We are going to take every precaution," said Jeffrey W. Schneider, an ABC spokesman, "to make this an exciting and thrilling event that families can feel very comfortable watching with their kids." On Monday, there was a dramatic reminder of the danger posed by the falls. An unidentified man who plunged over the falls survived, but was critically injured. Witnesses said the man jumped into the Niagara River about 10:20 a.m.; he was rescued about two hours later and was flown by helicopter to a hospital with what the police called life-threatening injuries.