'The Tonight Show' Makes Major Change to Its Weekly Schedule

After a decade on air, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon is making a major change to its production schedule.

Fans who've enjoyed five nights of hilarious late-night talk will be disappointed to learn that they'll be getting fewer new episodes.

For the new fall season that kicked off Sept. 3, The Tonight Show is continuing its summer schedule, which means new episodes four nights a week—Monday-Thursday—and a repeat episode on Friday. In previous seasons the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon aired new episodes five days per week.

The Tonight Show is following the lead of other late-night shows. The Late Show With Stephen Colbert , Jimmy Kimmel Live! , The Daily Show and Late Night With Seth Meyers have all scaled back to four nights a week.

The news of the schedule change came as a bit of a surprise to staffers who didn't learn about the change until Sept. 5—the day before it went into effect, according to Deadline .

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The change is believed to be driven by cost-cutting. Late-night viewership has been eroding due to increased competition from YouTube and streaming alternatives.

But don't expect The Tonight Show to go away entirely anytime soon. NBC renewed the show for five more years in 2021, which gives it solid footing through 2026.

As for Fallon, NBC extended his contract to host until 2028. Plus, he has a slew of other projects for NBC. Fallon's executive producing and appearing on the primetime reboot of Password and hosts the new game show That’s My Jam .

If that’s not enough, he also has Jimmy Fallon’s Tonightmares , a haunted house walk-through experience at Rockefeller Center.

Related: What's Going On With Jimmy Fallon and The Tonight Show ?

In fact, when Fallon's renewal was announced in July, NBCUniversal Media Group chairman Mark Lazarus, sang his praises.

“For nearly 30 years, Jimmy Fallon has brought laughter into the homes of millions and charmed audiences from the stages of 30 Rock,” Lazarus said. “It’s been a privilege to witness Jimmy at the helm of the The Tonight Show , and we’re thrilled to see what innovations he and the incredible staff will deliver in the years to come at the network.”

Meanwhile, Fallon sees his role on the Tonight Show as being an “outlet of joy” for legions of his fans. As he told Mo Rocca on CBS Sunday Morning last year, "This should be an hour where you don't have to think, and you go, 'Look at this idiot, he's doing something ridiculous,' and then you fall asleep. That would be my best reaction from any of my fans: 'Thank you, thank you for being silly so that you can make me not think about my problems.'"

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