Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show Moves to Four-Night Week

First on LateNighter: Starting this week, television viewers will see a little less of Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show on NBC.

The show is moving to a regular four-night-a week schedule, with Fridays the odd day out.

The move is consistent with what is now the standard in late night, with fresh episodes of shows like Late Night, The Late Show, and Jimmy Kimmel Live! running only four nights a week, not five. The Tonight Show had been the exception until now, still producing five fresh shows per week through what used to be called the traditional television “season”—September through May—and cutting back to four during the summer months.

A factor in the move is Fallon’s continuing commitments outside The Tonight Show, which this year will include Tonightmares, a new “haunted maze experience” the comedian is creating at 30 Rock, as well as a children’s book launch.

Cutting back on production costs has clearly become a factor across all of television, and that certainly includes late-night shows. With this move, all five of the remaining late-night shows on the broadcast networks—NBC, CBS, and ABC—will be skipping Friday nights in their weekly schedule.

The Daily Show has always had a Monday through Thursday schedule.

NBC’s other late-night franchise, Late Night, has also long had a four-night schedule, dating back to its earliest days with David Letterman as the host in 1982.

When Letterman moved to the 11:35 p.m. time slot on CBS with Late Show with David Letterman in 1993, he expanded to five original episodes weekly to match The Tonight Show. Later in his run on CBS, Letterman began taping his Friday shows on Mondays, performing two shows on that night. But original shows did air every weeknight.

The Tonight Show has gone through periods of adjustments in its schedule throughout its now 70-year history. When Steve Allen originated the show, it was a 90-minute national broadcast five nights a week, though he actually performed an additional 15 minutes for NBC’s New York affiliate. That bifurcated schedule was still in effect when Johnny Carson assumed the host role in 1962 and continued until 1967.

Carson, who was the unchallenged late-night leader throughout his 30-year run, eventually pushed for other major changes. In a bruising renegotiation with NBC in 1980, Carson won a reduction to a 60-minute show four nights a week, excluding Mondays. NBC produced an original show on Mondays featuring a guest host.

Later Carson scaled back again, hosting just three nights a week,  and NBC went with repeats of The Tonight Show on Fridays until Jay Leno took over the franchise in 1992. He enthusiastically returned to the five-night a week format. (Leno likely would have done seven nights a week if NBC had allowed him to.)

Conan O’Brien kept the five-night schedule during his unfortunately truncated role as host, which began in 2009. Fallon has done five shows a week—except during summer months—since he took over in 2014.

The shrinking network economy has already had demonstrable impact on late-night shows. This season, CBS did not retain its more traditional late-night show, The Late Late Show, which had most recently been hosted by James Corden. Instead it introduced a game-oriented comedy show, After Midnight (a reboot of Comedy Central’s @midnight), which has a smaller budget.

Just last month, NBC made another major change by eliminating The 8G Band, Late Night with Seth Meyers’s house band, in a move to save on costs.

Fallon’s Tonight Show will definitely retain its own highly celebrated band, The Roots. His show is also now well known for its elaborately staged games and stunts, which can be expensive to mount and produce. Those are also expected to continue.

Viewers still looking for some (brand-new) late-night comedy on Friday nights, or the wee hours of Saturday, will have to buy a subscription to HBO Max and tune into Real Time with Bill Maher at 10 p.m.

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