Starting September 2024, NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon will undergo some changes. It will air only four new episodes per week and it is part of a trend hitting late-night TV. Similar moves are being made by shows like The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Late Night with Seth Meyers.
This move is part of a greater trend where networks have started to scale back on live airings due to fewer viewers and increased competition from streamers such as YouTube and TikTok. NBC confirmed Fallon's show will air new episodes from Monday to Thursday and reruns will fill the Friday slot.
This is a huge shift for a show that aired five nights a week for 60 years. Fallon's Tonight Show is staying put as he signed a new deal with NBC, so he's not going anywhere until at least 2028. These changes are mostly about the money but also reflect the hard times traditional TV faces today.
Cost-cutting measures behind NBC's decision on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
The Tonight Show episodes are being trimmed down as late-night television faces serious budget cuts. According to Rolling Stone, NBC is changing things by letting go of Seth Meyers' in-house band and axing a late-night show that airs at 1:35 a.m.
Reduced viewership is mounting pressure to redo the whole way the networks program their shows. 8G Band keyboardist and musical coordinator for Seth Meyers, Eli Janney, told Rolling Stone about the changes afoot in late-night television:
"It’s the reality of broadcast and a shrinking market — streaming eating into this, and YouTube eating into that... So budgets everywhere have been cut and cut and cut."
Impact of new-age streaming on late-night TV like The Tonight Show
In any case, these new streamers have changed the dynamics of late-night content consumption. While viral clips of late-night shows go up on YouTube and TikTok, they don't make as much money from those clips as the regular TV ads.
Few people watch every live episode night after night, instead of watching top moments online. Rolling Stone pointed out that the way people watch TV has changed, and how it ultimately affects the networks, which have to cut costs and readjust their strategies.
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You can find The Tonight Show airing on NBC and streaming on Peacock.
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