‘Celebrity Name Game’ A Go For Season 3

FremantleMedia North America and Debmar-Mercury said today that their nationally syndicated Celebrity Name Game has been renewed for a third season following pickups by Tribune Broadcasting and the Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Celebrity Name Game enters NATPE with already more than 70% of the U.S. cleared for the 2016-17 season. Its renewal by the two key station groups follows a strong November 2015 sweeps for the program, hosted by Craig Ferguson and executive produced by Courteney Cox and David Arquette.

In households and the key 25-54 demos, it averaged 40% gains in the 88 markets where it remained in the same time periods in November versus year-ago time periods, the syndicators said.

Jennifer Mullin, co-CEO, FremantleMedia North America, said: “Celebrity Name Game has been a fantastic addition to our game show programming at FremantleMedia. We knew from the outset that this format had something special and seeing Craig win the Emmy for season one only reaffirmed our beliefs. Now halfway through season two, CNG has hit its stride, showing continuous growth, an engaged fan base and clearly has the potential to entertain audiences for quite some time.”

“Celebrity Name Game works so well because it is funny, serving as a viable alternative and companion to sitcoms on stations’ schedules,” said Mort Marcus and Ira Bernstein, co-presidents of Lionsgate-owned Debmar-Mercury. “This is due in large part to its incredibly talented host, an opinion shared by Daytime Emmy voters who awarded Craig the trophy for Best Game Show Host this past season.” 

Celebrity Name Game pairs celebrities with contestants as they improvise clues to identify as many correct answers as possible in a given time period. Consisting of two competitive speed rounds followed by a third round where Craig Ferguson provides the clues, teams must then face a broad mix of clues and categories ranging from a single letter to a real life tweet from a celebrity as they enter into the final $20,000 round.