No, not the one so many of you are still mourning. But beggars can’t always be choosers.
It’s James Corden, you wankers, and unless you’re a true World Cup afficiando you might have overlooked the fact that earlier this month he made a triumphant return to the daypart. At the time FOX Sports did send out a detailed press release that you likely missed:
FIFA WORLD CUP ON FOX AFTER HOURS WITH JAMES CORDEN features Corden in a fun, high-energy and comedic celebration of the “world” of the FIFA World Cup™. In conjunction with FOX Sports, the Fulwell Entertainment and Jolly Octopus-produced hourlong show will air throughout the tournament at midnight local time on FOX following all the action of the day with FIFA World Cup™ legend and former England national team captain Rio Ferdinand and comedian Ian Karmel joining Corden in studio. 
Corden had been the first victim of declining CBS daypart economics way back in 2023, the first of three such moves and one that had zero to do with anything a certain inveterate viewer may or may not have demanded of its ownership. Joe Biden was likely not a fan of Carpool Karaoke and I doubt he was texting Shari Redstone or even George Cheeks at any point. The fact is any show with a writing staff and a host who isn’t inclined to work for scale has a certain level of cost, and when you’re regularly being beaten in your 12:37 am time slot by Seth Meyers despite having the number one 11:35 am show in front of you is testimony that Corden’s appeal was way more niche than not. Were it not for the fact that Les Moonves caught him on Broadway in INTO THE WOODS and was convinced he was the natural successor to Craig Ferguson, accent and all, he would likely have never left the comfort zone of stage plays that he had returned to after he and CBS parted ways. But he’s indeed a huge soccer fan and he was between shows anyway so he was a decent a fit as could be found on short notice. We are aware that he may not have been the first choice of FOX Sports braintrust, but when a network is committed to milking as much advertising revenue out of shoulder programming for the matches as they are it became a mutually advantageous opportunity for redemption.
Corden himself drove the shotgun wedding theory home during last month’s FOX upfront presentation which TV INSIDER’s Meredith Jacobs relayed:
“(T)hey’ve got the rights to the games. I can’t stress this enough: If they didn’t have the rights to the games, I’d do this show on the network that did.“
And the concept of redemption includes the FOX Sports side of the ledger as well. AFTER HOURS is eminating from the same tidy studio whose overhead is covered by the fact that executive offices occupy the upper floors of the building that sits across a plaza that separated it from the half-ass compromise that I worked in for the last few years of my FX career and continued to house it for six years after it and co-tenant National Geographic Channel had been sold to Disney, creating the most convoluted access process to what was once a common commissary that one could imagine. When I worked there it was home to THE BEST DAMN SPORTS SHOW PERIOD, an ambitious effort to duplicate the kind of sport-centric variety programming that FOX Sports founder David Hill had been familiar with in his native Australia and that his protege and successor Eric Shanks remembers is quite familiar with. BDSSP, as it was known, was an ambitious hodgepodge of goofy sketches and an unexpected array of ex-athletes and comedians including Craig Robinson and Tom Arnold that required an exorbitant amount of detail work to merely get Nielsen to measure it. But advertisers loved it and economies of scale made it possible for that show to last eight years despite exceptionally modest and questionably accurate ratings, and even as recently as summer 2024 was the subject of a reunion panel at Fanatics Fest NYC. (An extensive memory lane piece from AWFUL ANNOUNCING’s Andrew Buchholz is a wonderful read). AFTER HOURS takes full advantage of those efficiencies and as a result makes the bar for success for this late night show a lot lower than those that the folks who used to work at CBS have been dealing with.
That’s a good thing, because its initial audience levels are trailing even Colbert’s much-lampooned replacement COMICS UNLEASHED–not withstanding it’s most def not an apples-to-apples comparison. Not that I imagine Corden and his Fulwell team is losing any sleep over it. They are delivering exactly what they promised at the upfront Jacobs reported on:
“(A) lighthearted look at the World Cup, talking about the games, talking about anything that may have happened that day, and what we’re going to do is make it feel like if you couldn’t be out with your friends in a bar that night, we’ll be there to have some fun.”
A quick glance at AFTER HOURS’ website highlights several examples of those familiar and flask-hoistable foibles that defined Corden’s LATE LATE SHOW and gives participants and personalities a chance to be seen for more than just their ability to successfully angle a corner kick. If you liked what he used to do, you’re probably content–and that would include moi. If you haven’t been missing his shtick, no harm no foul–there’s already an expiration date of July 19th concurrent with the end of the tournament that’s been set.
But I would offer to my friends at FOX Sports that if nothing else this might be a reminder that the formula for a late night alternative as the void deepens in a summer not only without Colbert but with Jimmy Kimmel on vacation still works. It’s helped to make GUTFELD statistically number one in the daypart on its sister network which also broadcasts from a wholly owned facility. FOX Sports is looking for ways to expand upon its OUTKICK brand and has a relationship with Barstool Sports that hasn’t born much fruit yet in daytime. FOX has also been more aggressive with the formal creation of a division devoted to finding digital creators than its competitors, and earlier this month announced several ongoing projects in development. No reason FS1, if not the FOX owned-and-operated stations in advance of the network itself, couldn’t be dragged into the mix as a secondary window.
Maybe a broader-appeal counter to the bro-centric SPORTSCENTER WITH SCOTT VAN PELT–replete with segments that can be shared digitally over a wider timeline that ESPN can avail itself of–is something worth exploring now that everyone’s refamilarized themselves with how one can pull this all off even in today’s landscape. T’would be a shame if it all went dark once Corden dances out of the spotlight again.
Until next time…