Jimmy Fallon (The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Saturday Night Live) is now the only regular late-night host still producing new episodes, as several competing shows enter extended summer breaks. According to Variety, NBC’s The Tonight Show is continuing its normal schedule while other major late-night programs pause production.
The change highlights the ongoing decline of traditional late-night television, with ratings falling and advertising revenue shrinking as more viewers shift to streaming platforms. NBC has started what is expected to be a seven-week break for Late Night With Seth Meyers.
The hiatus is reportedly the longest since Seth Meyers (Late Night With Seth Meyers, Saturday Night Live) took over the show in 2014. The program’s social media accounts told viewers that it would return in the fall.
Comedy Central’s The Daily Show has also entered a five-week hiatus and is expected to return in September. Rather than airing reruns during the break, the network plans to fill the time slot with other programming.
Jimmy Kimmel (Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Man Show) is also on summer vacation. His ABC series has used guest hosts, though the network is now airing a repeat of an earlier guest-hosted episode.
CBS is no longer producing a traditional late-night talk show after the end of Stephen Colbert’s (The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report) run. The network has instead leased two hours of late-night programming to entrepreneur Byron Allen.
That leaves Fallon as the only familiar late-night host producing new episodes over the next several weeks. Variety compared the current situation to the era when Johnny Carson (The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Johnny Carson Show) largely dominated late-night television before rivals such as Arsenio Hall (The Arsenio Hall Show, Coming to America) and Joan Rivers (The Joan Rivers Show, Fashion Police) entered the field.
Variety notes advertising spending on late-night programs fell to $209 million in 2025, down from $519.7 million in 2017. That represents a decline of nearly 60 percent.
Host contracts are also becoming shorter, with Kimmel recently signing a one-year extension with Disney through 2027, while mxdwn reported that John Oliver (Last Week Tonight, Community) agreed to one-year deal with HBO. Jon Stewart (The Daily Show, The Problem With Jon Stewart) has also worked under one-year extensions since returning to The Daily Show in 2024.