National Geographic Announces 2019-20 Upfront Slate, Pushing Programming Boundaries with its Distinctive, Premium Content from Best-In-Class Storytellers

New Series

• The Return of the Popular Series Brain Games with a celebrity twist;
• the next season of the award-winning series Genius Focused on Aretha Franklin;
• the channel's first competition series Race to the Centre of the Earth from prolific producer Bertram van Munster and the team behind the Amazing Race;
• greenlight of new episodes of Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted;
• a new season of Running Wild With Bear Grylls exclusive to Nat Geo;
• and two new unscripted series featuring up-and-coming nat geo talent
• Mariana Van Zeller and Albert Lin

Premium Natural History Series

• China’s Hidden Kingdoms

Returning Series

• Wicked Tuna

Dubai, United Arab Emirates - 20 June 2019:   Following National Geographic’s first Oscar win for the two-year-old Documentary Films banner Free Solo and its three cinematography awards — the most by any network in a single year — at last year’s Emmys, National Geographic Global Television Networks President Courteney Monroe unveiled the latest lineup of premium science, adventure and exploration content throughout the 2019-20 upfront season.

Highlights of the network’s announcements include the return of wildly popular series Brain Games, adding a Hollywood twist to its classic mind-bending format by challenging some of the world’s biggest celebrities to unleash their special brain power through fun and highly entertaining interactive games, illusions and social experiments; new series Race To The Centre Of The Earth, from the producers of “Amazing Race,” pitting extreme adventurers on a one-of-a-kind journey to win USD$1 million; and Lost Cities With Albert Lin, showcasing up-and-coming National Geographic talent.

Following the success of the network’s landmark natural history series Hostile Planet, which has reached a total of 13.2 million US viewers to date in L+7, marking the highest-rated series premiere on the channel since One Strange Rock premiered last March, this upfront sees an new epic special — China’s Hidden Kingdoms, setting the bar even higher with new animal behavior narratives and breathtaking landscapes that will not only entertain but take viewers to places beyond their wildest imaginations.

“For the past three years, our focus has been on quality and distinctiveness above all else and on building the most creatively ambitious, most entertaining National Geographic television network in history. This year’s upfront slate continues that ambition with highly entertaining programming from the best creative talent in the business,” said Monroe. “Big, bold premium programming that lives up to the promise and expectations of the National Geographic brand, including the reboot of our highly rated family-friendly series Brain Games; the next season of our multiple-Emmy-winning anthology series Genius, profiling the life of the ‘Queen of Soul,’ Aretha Franklin; and two inside access series, featuring incredible new talent Mariana van Zeller and Albert Lin.”

National Geographic’s global programming also has the full weight of the National Geographic portfolio behind it, including the unprecedented social media prowess as the most followed brand on Instagram, with over 100 million followers. 

Additionally, National Geographic is a factual TV brand leading the pack, ranking number one across overall equity as measured by Equitrend. In the just-published 2019 Beta Research Cable Subscriber Study, National Geographic Channel ranked number one for being informative, valuable, high quality, distinctive and bold.

For two consecutive years, National Geographic earned the second most Emmy award nominations for a basic cable network, putting it in the top 10 of all networks nominated. Additionally, the Oscar-winning Free Solo, which grossed USD$17.5 million at the box office, debuted on the network in March 2019 in the US and April 2019 in the Middle East and North Africa as the most-watched National Geographic Documentary Film, with more than 3 million US viewers in its linear debut.

Also setting the network apart in the media landscape is the fact that National Geographic has an unrivalled philanthropic giveback, distributing a portion of its proceeds to the nonprofit National Geographic Society — creating a virtuous cycle of storytelling and philanthropy committed to research, science, conservation and exploration.

National Geographic is reaching new heights by going further with groundbreaking, visually spectacular storytelling from the best explorers, photographers and filmmakers in the world.