Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show is the latest late-night show to enter the podcast game.
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon quietly began distributing a version of its show as a podcast earlier this month.
The podcast—which features Fallon’s monologue, sketches and games, and extended versions of his interviews from the previous night’s episode—will be released each morning Tuesday through Saturday.
“I’m excited to announce that I’m officially the last person on earth to start a podcast,” Fallon joked in a trailer for the show.
He’s not that far off. The Tonight Show is one of the last major players to join a growing trend of late-night shows turning to podcasting.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert launched The Late Show Pod Show, an audio cutdown of its nightly program with exclusive extras, in October 2021. The Daily Show has been doing the same with The Daily Show: Ears Edition since early 2018. Fallon’s NBC leadout launched its Late Night with Seth Meyers podcast in November 2016. And HBO has been putting out full episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher as a podcast since 2015.
Late-night hosts have also been launching their own podcast ventures outside their programs. Seth Meyers, Jon Stewart, and James Corden all host their own podcasts. Conan O’Brien and Bill Maher took things one step further, each launching their own podcast networks. And last year’s writers strike resulted in the limited-run podcast Strike Force Five, hosted by the late-night supergroup of Fallon, Meyers, Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and John Oliver.
Kimmel and Oliver have yet to offer their late-night shows as podcasts.
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon podcast is available on all major platforms, including Spotify and Apple.
