Talk about a sad song. Jimmy Kimmel’s new year on TV will feature about half the music.
Moving forward, Jimmy Kimmel Live! will only host musical guests twice a week, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter, though Deadline suggests that that amount is “not a hard number.”
Music has been a particularly integral part of Kimmel’s show since its debut in 2003, with Kimmel typically welcoming musical guests most nights of his usual four-show week. According to THR, JKL music producer Jim Pitt signaled the change to people in the industry in recent weeks.
The cutback comes not long after Kimmel signed a new contract with ABC that will keep JKL on the air for one more season—widely believed to be his last. (Terms of that deal were not disclosed.) But the change also comes as late-night faces ever-increasing budget cuts, which have recently positioned musical segments at the front of the chopping block.
NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers, for one, has been devoid of any live music since the departure of The 8G Band in August 2024 due to budget cuts. The show’s music department left along with the band—meaning the show lost not only the house band but any musical guests as well. Just last month, Meyers hosted the closest thing to a formal musical segment since that change: guest Brad Paisley performing a new comedic holiday song… from the couch.
Over on The Late Show, Stephen Colbert typically hosts one to two musical guests per week.
Last year, Pitt and fellow JKL music booker Mac Burrus reflected on the decline of music in late-night in an interview with Consequence, which reported a drop of roughly 600 fewer music bookings annually between 2013 and 2023.
“ I think Colbert is down to one a week, and Seth is not doing music anymore,” Pitt said at the time. “Mac and I, because it’s our department, feel very fortunate that Jimmy is such a supporter in the music space.”
JKL’s reduction will leave The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon as the only late-night show that programs musical performances all four nights of the week, excepting other occasional performance guests like comedians. But Fallon’s show, too, has been forced to make budget cuts in recent years. In the fall of 2024, The Tonight Show became the last network late-night show to reduce its output of new episodes from five to four per week.
Despite the change, Jimmy Kimmel Live! is set to feature three musical guests this week—including the singing voices of HUNTR/X from KPop Demon Hunters—EJAE, AUDREY NUNA, and REI AMI—on Thursday, January 8. Their performance on Fallon’s Tonight Show in October soared to become the most-viewed late-night clip of 2025.
So looks like this is what Kimmel meant when he talked about the future of late night~
Well at least he’s not completely taking away the platform for musical guests, ESPECIALLY the Cletones even after Cleto’s passing. It’s not like Seth w/his show completely stripping any presence of music from his show~
And honestly, as someone who has recently joined the Kimmel bandwagon, I would hardly see any differences with this change in the show. Kimmel can still welcome musical guests while taunting the President during his monologues and his guest interviews~
And partisan twerps will continue to insist there’s no way these late-night shows are losing millions every year despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
…..why are you dragging Tim Walz into this conversation? About Kimmel scaling back musical guests? Hasn’t Walz been through enough even after his decision?
I still think you’re an offshore troll bot taunting fans of late night, even if this format of television is getting dragged by all sides. Who are you gonna taunt and jeer next once this format is gone?
What’s Tampon Tim been through apart from helping defraud the Minnesota welfare system?
The point is that Kimmel wouldn’t be making these cost reductions if his crappy show wasn’t losing tens of millions per year, which some people actually deny.
You’ve already been told that your accusations against Tim Walz are unfounded, and you beta cucks haven’t provided any single solitary proof of any wrongdoing! As usual, you treasonous fuck holes are desperately trying to change the subject of your criminal toddler Drumpf, who’s trying to distract the world from the Epstein files and from ripping apart millions of Americans health care!
You just get more and more ridiculously desperate everytime you post, Mucky Boy! Do grow the fuck up, and stop embarrassing your trailer park!
Did you see Tampon Tim’s meltdown just now? Admits there was massive fraud and he’s the one responsible, and admits he’s about to be indicted.
Tampon Tim said he’s running for re-election, gets exposed for his $20 billion Somali fraud, and now drops out.
Tampon Tim in jail…so sad.
And there’s nothing that states he was frauding the people of Minnesota! And the only outburst he made was directed at Drumpf for using his state to distract people from the Epstein files, and that he kicked millions out of their health care coverage in order to hide the Epstein files from the public!
Once again, you lie Mucky Boy!
You’re long overdue for a trip to the woodshed, boy!
I love JKL. I have been in the studio audience 3 times. I have gotten so many people to watch the show just by word of mouth. We all find it interesting, comedic, and controversial.