NBC’s late-night line-up will soon look a lot different following the announcement of changes to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon . Typically, the series airs Monday–Friday with new original episodes each night. However, in a slightly unexpected decision, NBC has pulled the plug on one night a week of the series, dropping it down to four nights. Although The Tonight Show has not been without controversy over the years, the choice to remove an entire night from the lineup is still jarring.
According to Variety, NBC has decided to end production on new episodes of The Tonight Show in its Friday nighttime slot. The Jimmy Fallon-led talk show is merely the latest victim in an overall downward spiral for late-night content on network television. Before the aforementioned Friday night eradication, The Tonight Show was the lone mainstream late-night series still producing original content at that timeslot. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and NBC’s Late Night with Seth Myers have already dropped Friday night from their prestigious lineups.
Despite the erasure of its Friday night show, The Tonight Show had already stopped taping the series on Fridays. Instead, the series had a double taping on Thursdays with the second set airing on the following night. This latest move by NBC appears to be a cost-cutting measure, one that has impacted other shows on the network. Late Night with Seth Myers has already seen its fair share of shakeups, having its house band removed from the program. This budget cut and others paint a picture of trouble on the horizon for the health and longevity of the late-night television scene as a whole.
The Future Is Bleak For Late Night Television
Unfortunately, late night talk shows appeared to be doomed, with this latest motion by NBC serving as another sign of the obvious decline and impending demise of the genre. The budget for these shows is decreasing, and much of it can be attributed to the ever-evolving way in which viewers consume their favorite content. With TV no longer existing in a single linear form of viewing, many opt to stream or watch bite-sized clips on YouTube, TikTok, or other social media. If people are not watching the shows in their typical time slot, it leaves the network with little choice but to scale back the number of weekly episodes.
It’s unclear what the future holds for The Tonight Show or any of the other late-night shows in general, but the current outlook is grim. Declining ratings, on-set cuts, and entire days slashed from the lineup could be the beginning of the end for a decades-long staple of entertainment and television.
New episodes of
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
are available the next day on Peacock
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