Earlier this year, Skip Bayless ended his eight-year run as host of FS1’s flagship morning show Undisputed. The longtime hot take artist had reportedly signed a four-year extension worth $32 million with the network back in 2021, but was seemingly shown the door a year early.
The troubles faced by Undisputed have been well documented; losing co-host Shannon Sharpe to its direct competitor First Take, taking a several month hiatus, re-tooling the show with a rotating panel of guests, and continually drawing audiences of fewer than 100,000 viewers, the writing was on the wall that FS1 needed a change.
That change began in September to coincide with the start of football season. FS1 introduced two new shows to its morning show lineup, Breakfast Ball would air from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. ET and The Facility would take Undisputed‘s old time slot from 10 a.m. to Noon ET.
The days of FS1 trying to compete with ESPN’s morning lineup are long gone, but perhaps freshening up the talent roster would make some incremental gains for the network.
Through The Facility‘s first two months on air, very little has changed from a viewership perspective. Per multiple sources, the show is drawing an average audience of 121,000 viewers, still far below its competitor on ESPN.
But has it improved over Undisputed? Well, not yet. In fact, during the same period last year (the first eight weeks of NFL season), Undisputed also averaged exactly 121,000 viewers.
On Mondays — the most-watched day of the week for morning sports talk shows — Undisputed held a slight edge over its replacement The Facility. Last year, Undisputed averaged a Monday audience of 161,000 viewers through eight weeks while The Facility is averaging 154,000, down 4% year-over-year.
One could imagine Fox sees this as a success. Just two months in, The Facility is attracting just as many viewers as Undisputed did in its eighth year. Additionally, Fox has been able to offload Bayless’ hefty $8 million per year salary and replace it with the crew of Emmanuel Acho, Chase Daniel, James Jones, and LeSean McCoy.
So far, the data reinforces many people’s suspicions. FS1 could put just about any other program in Skip’s old time slot and see comparable returns. Towards the end of its run, the audience for Undisputed could dip as low as 50,000 viewers during football’s offseason, losing by nearly a factor of ten to First Take. Clearly the decision makers at FS1 felt it was time for a change, and opted to move on from an expensive investment that had run its course.
Now, FS1 has an opportunity to nurture new talent and see if The Facility can gain traction. While that might not seem likely for a show competing head-to-head with ESPN’s First Take every day, FS1 has seen a similar success story recently.
First Things First, hosted by rising star Nick Wright, saw 14 consecutive months of double-digit year-over-year viewership growth last year. The show launched as an early morning program in 2017 and has since moved to the afternoons, but is an example of how these types of shows can take years to build an audience.
Given Undisputed‘s moribund viewership, it was past time for FS1 to freshen up its morning show lineup. And the new shows should give them a better chance at growth than if they had kept the status quo.
Perhaps instead of trying to rip off First Take, FS1 can focus on carving out its own niche in the morning sports talk universe. There’s certainly an appetite among some audiences for a more civil and insightful sports discourse, and that’s the lane The Facility seems to be taking. It’s just a matter of if The Facility will find that audience, who may have already left morning sports talk altogether.
Nevertheless, FS1 deserves credit for trying something new. Now it’s up to the viewers to decide whether the network’s new lineup is worth watching.