It was reported yesterday that Travis Kelce in talks to host celebrity version of Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? in a reboot for Amazon Prime. This is not a done deal – as Variety notes, from two sources, Travis hasn’t signed yet, negotiations are ongoing, and apparently they’re trying to work out the scheduling should he play another season, or seasons. 

 

And Variety closes off the article like this: 

“Producers would no doubt hope to leverage Kelce’s relationship with singer and musician Taylor Swift to draw new fans to any series that might come to fruition. Swift’s appearances at various NFL match-ups involving the Chiefs last season — including the team’s appearance in Super Bowl LVIII — caught the eye of many younger consumers who might not ordinarily be football fans.”

 

TNT was the most-watched show in the latter part of 2023 and early 2024 so I get it, I get why people are trying to figure out ways to recreate that magic. But it’s one thing for Taylor Swift to show up for a football game, which is played LIVE, and support his performance. It’s entirely another for her to show up to a taping of a game show… as IF! This doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about him and isn’t willing to help but hiring someone in the hopes that his superstar girlfriend might show up for an episode that will air months later after all kinds of editing is absurd and if this is what the producers are banking on, it’s a bad idea, and Travis’s people, if they know what they’re doing – and by all accounts they do – should be able to sniff out that it’s a bad idea. They should be building the show around Travis, just Travis, and what he could potentially do in this new role in an environment that best makes use of his natural charisma. With emphasis on his chemistry with the celebrity contestants and also… if it were me, focusing on fashion. 

 

Travis is a fashion girly, to borrow Sarah’s expression. Make it so that people are also tuning in to see what he wears. Which would be a fresh new angle for a male game show host because nobody gives a sh-t normally about what a male game show host is wearing. This is how you can work Travis’s personal interests and image into the format. And then let him be silly because it’s obviously endearing to the people who’ve been so obsessed with TNT since they premiered themselves. He’s a goof, a giant of a man with the personality of a puppy. And still jock enough without the toxicity. So this game show could kinda be a bit of a roast on every episode too if they can figure out how to produce it so that there’s a comedy vibe they can lean into given that the actual premise of the game, questioning celebrities whether or not they’re smarter than a fifth grader which in and of itself is funny. Instead of comparing dick size, they can compare brain size. I would watch this show, and Taylor Swift never needs to make an appearance. Because a Taylor Swift appearance, actually, is the lazy way of producing a show. The bigger challenge here is whether or not Travis has it to be in the business, in front of the camera with a microphone in his hand (or attached to his lapel) and begin a career as a different kind of performer. 

 

I wrote in today’s open about Fame Intelligence, FQ, like Emotional Intelligence but applied to celebrity performance; a celebrity’s understanding of their own celebrity skillset and harnessing those skillsets strategically. It’s timing, it’s strategy, but it’s also instinct. Travis has shown us good instincts so far under an impossibly bright spotlight. So it’s super interesting to watch, going forward, how his FQ will guide him through his next moves. He should know better than to leverage Taylor at all in anything significant. That said, the way he does casually drop her into conversation, when the stakes are low, is the right call. It's a sprinkle, not the main ingredient. 

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