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Ratings Are in for Jason Kelce’s Late-Night Show, But Don’t Tell the Whole Story

Episode 1 of ‘They Call It Late Night with Jason Kelce’ on ESPN didn’t bring in a big television audience.

Jimmy Traina

Jason Kelce’s late-night ESPN show is scheduled to run for five weeks in a row.
Jason Kelce’s late-night ESPN show is scheduled to run for five weeks in a row. / Kevin Jairaj-Imagn Images

1. Hello, and Happy New Year even though I’m past the Jan. 3 window declared by Larry David.

Let me do a little house cleaning before we get to it today since I’ve been off for a little while.

If you missed it last week, I handed out the Sports Illustrated Sports Media Awards for 2024.

We also released three SI Media With Jimmy Traina podcasts over the holiday.

There was the fifth annual year-end extravaganza episode with Peter Schrager and Andrew Perloff.

There was an All-Traina Thought edition with Sal Licata.

And WWE's chief content officer, Triple H (Paul Levesque), joined me for an hour-long conversation.

O.K., now that I got that out of the way, let’s discuss Jason Kelce’s late night show with ESPN.

The debut episode of They Call It Late Night with Jason Kelce aired on Friday at 1 a.m. and Puck’s John Ourand revealed Monday night that 290,000 viewers tuned in.

I wasn’t sure how many viewers would be considered “good” for a show that airs at 1 a.m., but Ourand added that context and shared that ESPN averaged 436,000 in that time slot last January.

Regardless of the viewership number for the linear offering, 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.

As for the show itself, I didn’t watch it. I like Jason Kelce, but when it comes to the entire family, I’m Kelce’d out. However, over the past few days, I heard from multiple people in sports media about how bad the show was. So I tried to watch a “best of” compilation that ESPN put together for YouTube. I lasted three minutes before shutting it off. A whole bit about how the Kelce’s like to curse was just cringe.

The biggest problem Kelce has, besides overexposure, is that doing a comedy sports show for a corporate company is almost impossible to pull off. So many shows like Kelce’s have come and gone over the years, but few came up with a successful formula.

2. Amazon Prime announced that when it begins airing the NBA next season, its studio show will be hosted by Taylor Rooks and the analysts will be Blake Griffin and Dirk Nowitzki.

This crew has the potential to be one of the best in all of sports. Also, kudos to Amazon for resisting the urge to be like every other network and have a studio show with a million people on it. I love the idea of a three-person show. Let Griffin and Nowitzki cook.

3. Some ratings items from over the holidays.

Sunday night’s Vikings-Lions game on NBC drew 28.5 million viewers. It is now the third-most watched game in Sunday Night Football history.

Here’s how the college football quarterfinals did with fans:

• Ohio State–Oregon: 21.1 million
• Texas–Arizona State 17.3 million
• Notre Dame–Georgia 15.8 million
• Penn State–Boise State 13.9 million

4. MSG’s Mike Breen spotted Susie Essman in the stands at last night’s New York Knicks game and referred to her as being from Pardon the Interruption instead of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Breen realized his mistake and was completely disgusted with himself.

5. A few thoughts on Monday Night Raw’s debut on Netflix.

• There were zero streaming issues, so well done to all involved for that.

• It was great to see John Cena back.

• It was great seeing Hulk Hogan get mercilessly booed.

• It was great seeing Macaulay Culkin get a huge pop.

6. On last Thursday’s episode of First Take, Chris “Mad Dog” Russo spent more than five minutes ranting about the fact that he has spent months promoting the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, starring Timothée Chalamet, yet couldn’t get Chalamet on his SiriusXM radio show for an interview.

Well, Chalamet caught wind of Russo’s First Take diatribe and now the Mad Dog is getting a European premiere invite.

7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: With Monday Night Raw moving from cable to streaming, never forget the time the wonderful duo of Bobby Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon hilariously stumped for cable companies to carry the Royal Rumble.

Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Google. You can also follow Jimmy on X and Instagram.

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Jimmy Traina
JIMMY TRAINA

Jimmy Traina is a staff writer and podcast host for Sports Illustrated. A 20-year veteran in the industry, he’s been covering the sports media landscape for seven years and writes a daily column, Traina Thoughts. Traina has hosted the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast since 2018, a show known for interviews with some of the most important and powerful people in sports media. He also was the creator and writer of SI’s Hot Clicks feature from 2007 to '13.

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