Williams Signs With Debmar-Mercury Through 2022

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Lionsgate-owned Debmar-Mercury has signed talk-show host Wendy Williams through 2022, Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer said last week during a company earnings call.

While Williams herself is signed, The Wendy Williams Show has not been renewed by television stations for the same time period, although that renewal is all but guaranteed. The show has been on a constant growth path for the past three years. In the week ending Nov. 1, Wendy Williams averaged a 1.7 among households, according to Nielsen, passing NBCUniversal’s Maury to rank fifth among all talkers.

“Wendy has become a major force in daytime talk, and we are thrilled to know she will be dishing out her daily dose of hot topics and entertaining conversations on The Wendy Williams Show for many years to come,” Debmar-Mercury copresidents Mort Marcus and Ira Bernstein said in a statement.

Paige Albiniak

Contributing editor Paige Albiniak has been covering the business of television for more than 25 years. She is a longtime contributor to Next TV, Broadcasting + Cable and Multichannel News. She concurrently serves as editorial director for The Global Entertainment Marketing Academy of Arts & Sciences (G.E.M.A.). She has written for such publications as TVNewsCheck, The New York Post, Variety, CBS Watch and more. Albiniak was B+C’s Los Angeles bureau chief from September 2002 to 2004, and an associate editor covering Congress and lobbying for the magazine in Washington, D.C., from January 1997 - September 2002.