Inside the Fox Upfront: Rupert Murdoch, David Letterman and an Unfortunate Tom Brady Pass

In some respects, Fox delivered the most traditional upfront presentation anybody is likely to see this week. Executives and talent kept the focus on live sports and news, all of the men wore suits and there was nary a mention of a subscription service. Even if they have one.

In other respects, the Monday afternoon program was a postmodern odyssey — as evidenced by 95-year-old Rupert Murdoch, seated in the fourth row with son Lachlan and members of the proletariat, nodding his head along to Jay Z’s “Public Service Announcement” as Jamie Foxx came on stage to deliver an impression of President Donald Trump mispronouncing “Tesla.”

And that was within the first five minutes.

Denis Leary told the Boston Celtics fans in the Manhattan Center audience to “fuck off” as a Knicks pep rally grew outside the Madison Square Garden adjacent venue. David Letterman was lifted in the air, a la Jennifer Grey, by Michael Strahan in an effort to promote IndyCar racing. And Tom Brady beaned some anonymous media buyer with a poorly executed pass to his fellow sportscaster and former teammate Rob Gronkowski.

Fortunately, nobody appeared to be injured. And there was also a lot of coherent messaging between the parade of talent who seemed reluctant to follow the teleprompter and the music cues which hit at odd intervals. After a “told ya” about last year’s forecast that Fox News would dominate election night coverage (duh) and that medical drama Doc would be a hit (legit surprise), the pitch was underway. “[We have] a long history of contrarian thinking,” said Fox Corp president of advertising sales, marketing and brand partnerships Jeff Collins, quick to plug several stats du jour. Among the more appealing was that 24 percent of commercial time airing programs with over 1 million viewers is on Fox. And you may take a moment to work that one out before you read on.

Selling Fox Sports, Fox News Media, Fox Entertainment and ad-supported streamer Tubi, Collins leaned heavily on sports and news in particular. After all, they are among the more consistently high performing ad-friendly properties being proffered this week. Speaking of ad-friendly, Tubi got an even bigger chunk of the hour and fifteen minute lineup than last year.

“We have one business model,” CEO Anjali Sud said of her entirely ad-supported platform, which now boasts 97 million active monthly users. “It hinges entirely on delivering the right ads to the right viewers at the right time.”

These advertisers desperately want to reach those young viewers, but they certainly don’t seem comfortable seeing them in the wild. When Tubi rolled out its Gen Z talent to plug projects with titles like “Kissing is the Easy Part” and “How to Lose a Popularity Contest,” the audience grew uncomfortably quiet.

Soon after the kids vacated the stage, there was a tonal 180 as Fox News’ Martha MacCallum interviewed a remote Bret Baier, who had taken his iridescent teeth on assignment to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to interview Trump. Remember, buyers, these are the folks the commander in chief has on speed dial.

A fascinating thing to watch as the Fox brands have become more closely unified over the last six years is how it hasn’t impacted talent turn-out. Before the studios were sold off to Disney, Fox News was glossed over at the pitch-fest. Now Jane Lynch shares stage time with Harris Faulkner. Jon Hamm, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Brendan Fraser were among the marquee names who followed Jamie Foxx.

Hamm, who has a cartoon on the broadcast network, got one of the bigger laughs of the night with a well-delivered Mad Men joke. “I have a lot of great memories from the upfronts,” he said. “mostly from my time working in advertising in the 60s.”

It was only a few hours earlier that NBC hyped its upcoming 100th anniversary, and Fox ended the presentation with its own milestones: 25 years of Gordon Ramsay on the network and 250 years of The United States of America. Apparently the nation’s semiquincentennial figures prominently into Fox’s 2026 programming plans.

And we’ll see how that shapes up if we make it another year.