The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon makes huge change

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon has now become the latest late-night show to follow a pretty significant trend. What is that? Well, it’s rather simple: Going down to four episodes a week.

According to a report from USA Today, the institution is dropping Friday nights from the schedule, and they are going to now just put on repeats at that point. This is a fundamental change, even if The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel Live! have already been doing it. The reason for this is due supposedly to cost-cutting measures, which is the same reason why Late Night with Seth Meyers recently lost its live band.

While a lot of this is frustrating, it also symbolizes exactly what is happening in the TV world these date. Late-night in general has been forced to undergo a huge pivot, one where digital clips and interviews online are as big of profit drivers as anything. There has to be a way to offset further the costs of a show, especially one that does still have a band and a big-name host.

The real question to us long-term is simply this: Whether or not we are going to end up seeing late-night shows at all within the next five or ten years. They are a classic part of television, but they existed at a time in which there were fewer options out there. Fallon’s biggest skill set, ironically, is not even the traditional late-night stuff like a monologue or interviews. Instead, he excels the most at some of the wacky games and digital clips that you do see online much of the time. This may help with his particular show’s longevity a little bit.

For those wondering, The Daily Show has always been four nights a week — with that in mind, there are few changes to worry about there.

What do you think about The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon dropping a show a week?

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