With the fall season coming to an end, ABC is already looking ahead to the summer which will bring back several beloved series.
ABC was the first to confirm its summer schedule, which includes new seasons of Bachelor in Paradise, Celebrity Family Feud, Press Your Luck, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and the recently announced Match Game revival. One show that was surprisingly nowhere to be found on the confirmed lineup: Claim to Fame season 4.
The fourth season of ABC’s hit series, hosted by Frankie and Kevin Jonas, was surprisingly missing from the ABC summer schedule. This has taken many fans by surprise as Claim to Fame has become a staple on ABC’s summer slate since premiering in 2022, so the expectation was that the show’s fourth season would be coming in June or July. Instead, Claim to Fame season 4 was missing from the ABC summer slate, and the show’s future is now being called into question.
Interestingly, ABC never publicly announced the show’s renewal, though a casting card at the end of the third season seemed to hint another season was in development. However, it’s looking like the show might have been quietly canceled, or at the least, put on a longer hiatus which is becoming a regular trend for ABC, it seems.
Fans will recall that Bachelor in Paradise did not air a new season in 2024, but the show is coming back this summer for a new season. TVLine even encouraged fans not to jump to the wrong conclusion in pointing out that “ABC’s scheduling of unscripted shows is ‘opportunistic’ — meaning, 'when they need it.'"
Still, we have to wonder whether Claim to Fame’s time on ABC might be coming to a close for one key reason: There has not been any promotion from the company behind the show, Kinetic Content.
Following the show’s first two seasons, Kinetic Content openly shared information about opening casting calls for future seasons; however, there was no casting call post shared for Claim to Fame season 4. This might seem like nothing, but if a fourth season was truly happening, we can’t imagine a world in which Kinetic Content would suddenly just stop sharing information about the opening casting calls. After all, the company has maintained an active presence on social media and leveraged its social pages to spread the word about casting for new seasons.
Between the lack of a casting notification for Claim to Fame season 4 and the fact that the show was not included on ABC’s summer schedule, we have to wonder if Claim to Fame has been quietly canceled by ABC. If ABC has canceled the show, we’re definitely disappointed in the decision, as the show had become a fun summer watch and we loved guessing along with the cast over the season, trying to figure out which celebrities the season’s players were related to.
For now, we'll hope that Claim to Fame is just going to sit out the summer but will return at a later day similar to the approach ABC took with Bachelor in Paradise.