It’s after 1 a.m. ET on a Friday night (or Saturday morning, for the sticklers).
There’s really only one reason anyone tunes into ESPN at this hour: they’ve had a few drinks, maybe a gummy or two, and are looking for some low-stakes, mindless sports talk to cap off the night.
Enter They Call It Late Night with Jason Kelce, ESPN’s latest late-night experiment, which debuted this weekend in the early hours of Saturday morning. It’s a show tailored for the night owl, the stoner, and the barfly stumbling home hoping to fall asleep to the comforting hum of NFL highlights mixed with some lighthearted comedy.
At least, that’s what the show was supposed to be.
Unfortunately, Jason Kelce’s inaugural foray into late-night television delivered neither the laughs nor the sports talk that its target audience would expect at that hour.
A Promising Setup
The first episode of the show had everything going for it on paper.
The host, Jason Kelce, is on a meteoric rise in sports media between his ultra-successful podcast New Heights and a central role on ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown. Better yet, “sports media royalty,” Charles Barkley, featured prominently in the show’s debut. Hall of Famer Harold Carmichael made a cameo in the first 15 minutes. Philly royalty Lil Dicky appeared on the panel.
The show was set up for success.
And yet, despite the name-brand guests, Kelce’s show largely fell flat.
A Clunky Start
The A-block of the show sought to introduce Kelce and his late-night ambitions. A lighthearted skit opened the program with Kelce having a “conversation” with Lincoln Financial Field, the stadium where the former Eagles center spent his entire career. The bit was innocent enough, but what followed set the tone for a show heavy on gimmicks, light on comedy, and even lighter on actual analysis.
After introducing his band SNACKTIME, who was oddly placed in the theater’s balcony being used to film the show, Kelce brought in his wife Kylie, who sat in the opposite balcony far away from her husband. The two had a mildly humorous back-and-forth about the logistics of cursing on ESPN airwaves before Kelce leaned on yet another gimmick — this time a skit with fellow late-night host Jimmy Kimmel to inaugurate him into the late-night fraternity.
But by the time the skits and introductions were over and actual sports came into the equation, it was 20 or more minutes past the hour.
Missed Opportunities
The centerpiece of the episode was a panel discussion featuring Barkley, Lil Dicky, and Brian Baldinger. The topic? Should the Eagles rest Saquon Barkley in Week 18 or let him chase the single-season rushing record?
A decent premise — but here’s the issue: two of the three panelists (Barkley and Lil Dicky) had no real football background. The resulting conversation was, unsurprisingly, surface-level and unremarkable. Worse, it ended up being the most engaging part of an otherwise lackluster show.
After the Saquon conversation concluded, They Call It Late Night returned to the gimmicks. This time, they leaned into the show’s partnership with NFL Films.
Kelce began a segment where he and his three panelists — Barkley, Dicky, and Baldinger — would narrate NFL Films footage in the classic documentary style that football fans are accustomed to when watching old highlights. But instead of leaning on the creative chops of Charles Barkley and Lil Dicky, the show required them to read off of scripts. Who wants to see the great Charles Barkley read off of a script? He’s at his best when letting it rip on Inside the NBA.
Watching him be forced to read a teleprompter was painful at best and wholly disrespectful to his talents as a television personality at worst.
The show felt completely overproduced.
Overproduced and Underwhelming
The biggest problem with They Call It Late Night is that it tries too hard.
Understandably, Jason Kelce doesn’t have traditional television experience, so it makes sense to give him some guidance. But what makes Jason Kelce great on his podcast and Monday Night Countdown isn’t pre-produced skits and dumb gimmicks; it’s his conversations. His authentic feelings about what’s happening in sports, in life, and the world.
They Call It Late Night had none of what makes Kelce a natural media star.
Instead, the show felt like Jason Kelce trying to do his best Jimmy Fallon impression, even though nobody watching ESPN at 1 a.m. asks for that.
As someone who went into this experience primed and ready to laugh — I left disappointed and confused.
I’m disappointed because Kelce has offered the full package as a television analyst: insight, humor, and the ability to be relatable. However, during his late-night show, he was none of those things.
I was also confused because I was awestruck that the show producers would try to shoehorn Kelce into the dying medium of late-night television. It’s possible to produce a late-night program that isn’t the same format all broadcast networks use. In fact, ESPN is likely the perfect place to try that. Find a way to intersperse actual sports talk with lighthearted comedy. Numerous digital outlets have successfully figured out this formula.
This isn’t the first time ESPN has experimented with the late-night genre. Always Late with Katie Nolan had a successful three-year run from 2018-20. There’s the infamous Barstool Van Talk that was canned after one episode in 2017. Both shows seemed to serve its core audience better than Kelce’s did.
A Disappointing Finish
The show’s final segment encapsulated its shortcomings. Kelce brought out four NFL fans known for their beer-chugging exploits, a seemingly perfect fit for his brand. But the segment devolved into an anticlimactic competition. Half the contestants didn’t finish their beers, and one spilled his all over himself.
This dude is practically ESPN’s tailgate correspondent, after all.
It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t entertaining. It was just awkward — and a microcosm of a show that seemed determined to miss the mark.
You can’t blame Kelce for the lackluster chugging skills of his chosen guests. But the segment was emblematic of the show’s bigger problems: It was trying too hard.
Where Does It Go from Here?
With four episodes remaining in this limited run, ESPN can salvage They Call It Late Night. The solution? Strip away the gimmicks and let Kelce do what he does best: talk sports, crack jokes, and be himself.
The current format feels like ESPN is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Late-night TV, as we know it, doesn’t need another host doing stale monologues and scripted skits. What it needs is a fresh approach that plays to Kelce’s strengths and embraces the unique opportunity ESPN has to blend sports and comedy in a way that feels authentic.
With that said, ESPN will have to make radical changes before They Call It Late Night becomes a permanent fixture of the network’s overnight hours.