View Full Version : Is it fair to judge ESPN's They Call it Late Night with Jason Kelce off its...


TMC
01-07-2025, 10:48 PM
..."not particularly good" premiere viewership?

https://www.si.com/nfl/jason-kelce-late-night-show-espn-first-episode-ratings

"I've seen the numbers for ESPN's first episode of They Call It Late Night with Jason Kelce, and they're not particularly good: 290,000 viewers (https://x.com/Ourand_Puck/status/1876410068943397327)," tweeted Puck News' John Ourand of ESPN's new late-night show, which premiered 1 a.m. ET early last Saturday morning. Ourand added that comparisons "are tough. Two weeks ago, that time slot had more than 700,000 viewers. But that figure was inflated by the Indiana-Notre Dame playoff game earlier in the night. Same time period last January averaged 436,000. From ESPN's perspective, viewership numbers from a late-night talk show that has a five-episode run don't matter nearly as much as other aspects of this programming deal. ESPN is happy to be in business with Jason Kelce, regardless." But, as Sports Illustrated's Jimmy Traina argues, "it doesn’t make a ton of sense in this day and age to judge a show like Kelce’s off of TV ratings alone. That show is produced just as much for YouTube and social media as it is for the ESPN television audience. It’s also produced because Jason’s brother is dating the biggest pop star in the world, but that’s a whole other issue. If the show can get any traction on social media, and if Travis keeps dating Taylor Swift, ESPN will be fine with a low television rating, especially since the show is only expected to air for five weeks in a row."