The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon has become one of the last late-night talk shows to scale back to four nights of originals a week. According to Deadline, the NBC talk show will be cutting Fridays from its production schedule and will only release new episodes Monday through Thursday starting this season.
The Tonight Show originally aired new episodes Monday-Friday and switched to the Monday-Thursday schedule over the summer. However, during the off-season, the show’s team was informed that the abbreviated production schedule would be carried over to the rest of the year. According to USA Today, the show’s usual Friday time slot at 11:35 p.m. EDT will now air repeats for the new season.
The Tonight Show follows in the footsteps of ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers and CBS’ Late Show With Stephen Colbert, which have all gradually been making the transition to four shows a week. Comedy Central’s The Daily Show has always followed the four-shows-a-week model. The move in the late-night talk show genre has been made by networks in an effort to cut costs in the midst of lowering linear viewership. The majority of late-night content today is consumed through streaming and YouTube rather than through broadcast television.
NBC’s cost-cutting measures also impacted Late Night With Seth Meyers, which recently cut its house band, The 8G Band.
Though new episodes of the talk show will be less frequent, The Tonight Show is not going anywhere. NBCUniversal recently renewed its contract with Fallon to keep the show on the air through 2028. Fallon has been the host of The Tonight Show since taking over for Jay Leno (Jay Leno’s Garage, The Jay Leno Show) in 2014. The show remained number one among its rivals in the late-night genre, now ranking third among total viewers.
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon is available to stream on NBC from 11:35 p.m. EDT/10:35 p.m. PT each weeknight.