Ah, the upfronts. The best week of the year to miss your family’s Mother’s Day celebrations, have a cocktail or thirty, and hear some of the most iconic comedians on television pretend to understand what you do for a living.
As is tradition during upfronts week, media companies like NBCUniversal and Disney invited late-night hosts and comedians like Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel, Tina Fey, Craig Ferguson, Matt Rogers, and Bowen Yang, who roasted competitors, the state of the industry, and, in some cases, themselves. Execs like Amazon US Ad Sales VP Tanner Elton and Robert Voltaggio, co-president of US ad sales at Warner Bros. Discovery, made a few cracks onstage, too.
We rounded up some of our favorite punchlines from this year’s presentations below.
On upfronts week:
Kimmel: I’ve been through so much bullshit this year, it actually made me appreciate this bullshit.
Ferguson: When I was a wee boy growing up in the swamp being raised by Shrek, they said to me, “You’ll never make it in show business. You’ll never play Madison Square Garden—not the small theater in the morning, when people don’t pay.”
Rogers: Anything can happen at the upfronts.
Yang: That’s right! Heather Gay and Jenna Bush Hager could come out and rap about contextual realignment. Stay tuned for their new rap duo, Gay Bush.
On new company ownership:
Voltaggio: Before we go on, we do want to address the Ellison—I mean, the elephant—in the room.
Meyers: After over a decade, we have taken down CBS. Well, the Ellisons did, but I like to think we helped. Seriously, what’s going on over there? They’re so in the pocket for Trump that I heard next year, Survivor is in the Strait of Hormuz.
Kimmel: Since I started at ABC, I’ve had three CEOs: Bob, Bob, Bob, and Josh. Josh’s last name is pronounced “D’Amaro.” As in, “All the shows you saw earlier will be canceled D’Amaro.”
On live programming:
Kimmel: This will be the first Super Bowl on ABC in 20 years, and we are going to milk the bejesus out of it…and as if the country isn’t already divided enough, we put the game on Valentine’s Day, just to be dicks. Let me tell you what, the halftime show this year is going to be the whitest shit you’ve ever seen. Goodbye, Bad Bunny. Welcome back, O-Town.
Meyers: NBC has the Emmys this year. Well, we’re airing them. HBO is the one who actually gets to have them.
On younger audiences:
Fey: I’m Tina Fey, or as Gen Z knows me, Timothée Chalamet’s well-behaved mom.
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Kimmel: The Rookie was among the most-streamed shows among viewers under 18. Young people love The Rookie. And do you know why? I’m actually asking why. Does anyone know why this is happening? This is like finding out tweens love Triscuits.
On AI:
Kimmel: Agentic AI is a group of autonomous systems that are planning, making decisions and executing multistep tasks to achieve specific goals with limited human supervision. And that is a fancy way of saying you are all fucked.
On proteinmaxxing:
Elton: Whether you want to reach the organics-only Whole Foods shopper, coffee lovers on the East Coast, or the most desirable demo in our entire industry—fathers of five who bulk-order protein—we’ve got you.
On company rivals:
Meyers: Netflix is hosting its upfronts at a pier on the Hudson River, because once a Netflix show hits two seasons, that’s where they dump its body…CBS did not hold an upfront presentation this year, because “the CBS upfront” just describes how they paid Trump to drop the lawsuit.
Kimmel: For the first time, I think ever, I am rooting for CBS. They’ve got a lot of great returning shows. They’ve got some great new shows. NCIS: New York answers the question, “What if LL Cool J partnered up with another white guy in a different city?”…NBC is saying they’re No. 1. Are you allowed to brag about being No. 1 when you have the Olympics and the Super Bowl? Only if you have them again next year, and you don’t. NBC picked up Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., and Chicago Med. Seriously, is someone at NBC fucking the mayor of Chicago?
On Anderson Cooper’s hair:
Ferguson: There was a little bit in the prepared remarks for me that said, “Compliment Anderson’s hair.” And I thought, that’s a weird thing. So I asked Anderson, “Did you write that in?” And he said, “No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Anyway, I do want to compliment Anderson’s hair because it’s beautiful…That’s Vanderbilt hair. That hair conditions itself as he is moving around.
On the FCC:
Meyers: I’m Seth Meyers, or as the FCC calls me, next.
Kimmel: Usually for ABC to pull you off the air, you have to throw a chair at your Mormon boyfriend…I cost my company a lot of money this year. Billions. It is very possible that no employee in the history of any company has cost their company more.
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