In the war of attrition fought between nostalgia and ratings, Friday nights are the newest casualty suffered by the traditional late-night talk show format. NBC has announced that The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon will no longer broadcast new episodes to usher in the weekend on Friday nights.
The Tonight Show Faces the Latest Smack to Tradition
Soon after the announcement that NBC has renewed The Tonight Show through to 2028, the network also confirmed that they will reduce the number of weekly episodes. Starting immediately, viewers tuning in for a Friday night with Fallon will be presented with a rerun. The decision to curtail The Tonight Show is only the most recent in a long line of setbacks for the late-night concept.
While talk show hosts retain some of their influence, and their clips continue to do well on YouTube and TikTok, the heyday of must-see late-night TV is long gone. In fact, among his contemporaries, Jimmy Fallon was the last remaining bastion of the full five-day workweek.
Fallon’s competitors and NBC colleagues alike have been running a four-episode week for some time. NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers – the program directly following The Tonight Show – already eschewed a Friday broadcast. Meyers does do well on the online short-form series Corrections, an offshoot of his television program. Despite this, tightening budgeting constraints impacted his late-night show both visibly and aurally – the network ousted his live band. Fallon’s scaled-back schedule is simply another nail in the coffin for the once-prosperous television behemoth.
The Tonight Show Falling from Astronomical Heights
It wasn’t always thus, of course. In the not-too-distant past, late-night shows drew huge viewership figures. Host Johnny Carson loomed as a titan over the zeitgeist. Outstanding comedians historically cut their teeth in late-night talk shows. Plus, the shows were cheap to produce and tremendously popular – the most seductive combination for any TV executive.
Nearly everybody watched them. Viewers caught up on the day’s pop culture happenings, had a good giggle, and spent a few minutes getting to know the celebrity guests. The Tonight Show was a compact digest, a one-stop-shop to keep everyone entertained and up to speed.
But we live far removed from Carson. The bountiful audience has scattered to YouTube clips, TikToks, and next-day online VODs. Or the people don’t watch at all, discarding the format entirely in favor of newer content avenues. Podcasts and YouTube interview shows continue to thrive as a nuanced way to get to know celebrities. Meanwhile, online comedy has become a reliable way to laugh about current events, moving at a speed a network show could never hope to match.
Final Thoughts
It looks as though the mammoth will take its last shambling steps in today’s decentralized media landscape. Although facets of the whole will continue on, evolved and dispersed, it seems we will soon have to bid goodbye to the condensed daily format that was a touchstone to generations.
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